An interesting thing happened at our dog park one morning last week. As usual, us “dog-park guys” were standing around talking about nothing important but solving all the world’s problems during the process. Then one guy asked me what I thought about Google’s Chromebook. It was interesting to me because just the night before I had watched my very first Chromebook TV commercial. So did the guy asking me the question, so I guess it proves TV ads do work.
Samsung’s $249 Chromebook 3 sports an 11.6 screen
I’ve been following the progress of Google’s Chromebook with great interest for two years now thinking that someday it just might be a cheaper alternative to expensive tablets like the iPad, Nexus and who knows maybe even Windows and Mac laptops. After a slow start, sales of Google’s Chromebook are really starting to take off so I spent some time a few days ago doing a bit of techie research.
Maybe some of you are reading this thinking “what’s the big deal – it looks like a laptop to me”! Well, sort of. The Chromebook is the first “Internet-dependent” laptop and it runs the Linux browser-based Chrome Operating System instead of the Apple Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows. The only stored app that runs on it is Google’s Chrome web browser, thus the label internet-dependent.
An Acer Chromebook can be purchased for as little as $199
If you’re looking to do much more than surf the web, email and create cloud-based content (e.g. Google), then this is not the laptop for you. But if you’re looking for a tablet with an integrated keyboard, then the Chromebook is an option. My question was what about us bloggers? Would this work for us? It depends!
Before I get into “it depends”, lets take a closer look at Samsung’s Chromebook 3. It sports the same mobile system-on-a-chip found in the Google Nexus 10 tablet. Like the Nexus 10, the Chromebook has 2GB of memory and a 16GB hard drive. Another thing, it’s very, very fast as it boots from a cold start to operational status in roughly 7 seconds. The beauty of the Chromebook is there are no virus programs or other junk onboard to slow it down – it’s just a browser.
Chromebooks, iPads and Tablets still can’t compete vs Laptops
The Chromebook also sports built-in Wi-Fi, two USB ports (one USB 3.0, one USB 2.0), a 3-in-1 card reader, and a combo audio/mic ports. There’s also an HDMI-out port on the back of the machine. The ports allow for Cellular access to the Internet in addition to free Wi-Fi connections.
Now, about blogging with a Chromebook. First, you must have an Internet connection to do anything with a Chromebook. So, to compose a blog you’d have to use a web-based app like Blogger’s editor (cue the boos!). Live Writer won’t work on a Chromebook because the OS only supports web-based apps. That also rules out Picasa 3.8 (cue more boos!). But, neither of these apps work on the Apple Mac, iPads or iPhones either. Blogsy is also a no-no!!
So, here’s the deal, you could create your blog using Blogger Editor, import your photos from your SD card and then publish your post direct to Blogger. From there, you could read your blog as well as any other. Comments are no problem as Gmail and other web based email programs (hotmail, yahoo) work just fine.
After looking at the Chromebook from several different angles, I’m convinced it still fails as a primary computing device. But, so does my iPad. So do all the other small tablet computers everyone is gobbling up by the thousands. They are all great secondary devices for fun and entertainment but they are not full function computers like desktops and laptops.
Spam totals for the 21 hours between 12am and 9pm Wednesday
| Total Spam Comments | Total Published | Percent Effective |
| 142 | 2 | 98.6% |
Have a great Thursday, and thanks again for visiting!
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