There's a new type of laptop seen lurking in high street stores and retail parks around the country. No, it's not a sleek Microsoft Windows based machine nor is it a fancy new breed of Apple Mac, this animal comes directly from the Cloud. Agent Dale Collins gets his hands on the latest laptop system from Google and puts their Chromebook through its paces to understand its purpose in life.
What's new?
The Google Chromebook is a low-power, low cost computing device running an operating system called Chrome OS, built around Google’s own web browser which is also called Chrome. Chrome OS is a web-based operating system using services like Google Drive to store data and the Play Music service to stream all of your favourite tracks. Being a web-based operating system means you will require an internet connection for near enough everything you would like to do - a new phenomenon for domestic computing. The computer platform has been heralded as something that will take education by storm as cheaper machines at £200 or less can offer strong performance, and the system offers administrators a lot of control over what users can access. Add in the ability to log in and out quickly and easily without having to store all the other users files locally on the machine and it's a tantalising proposition for offices and schools around the globe.
A new user experience
Upon first setup I was greeted by a login screen and I was asked to log in using my Google account; this was only the start of my journey into the power of the Chromebook. Once my account was signed in a nicely designed ‘Welcome’ menu greeted me, giving me a few hints and tips on how to use and navigate the OS. After I swept through these hints I launched the Chrome web browser and my journey really kicked up a gear. The operating system is built around the Chrome Web Store where I duly found myself upon opening the browser and was presented with an array of Web Apps and extensions which would go on to enhance my experience and make it a lot more fun and enjoyable.
The Web Store offers up a huge variety of web apps, much like your smartphone, such as games, productivity and lifestyle apps. A lot of these apps will go on to launch a web page in your Chrome browser, but never the less they made it a lot quicker for me to navigate around the pages and tools I started playing around with. It's important to note that while there are a lot of cool tools and some great creative ideas here in the Web Store, it's lacking a little in depth. We're not talking about the Play Store or Apple's App Store in terms of sheer volume of applications, but I quickly found alternatives for the common apps I would run on a Mac or Windows 8 machine every day. In fact, trawling through the different categories actually highlighted some tools and apps that I wouldn't have considered like Lucidchart or the amazing PDF Mergy, which is definitely one for fellow Geeks out there!
In Sync
My favourite part, due to the fact that I use Chrome on my desktop, phone and laptop, was that all my information had been transferred across to the machine and was available for use nearly instantly. My bookmarks were in the correct order and folders were intact, all of my saved passwords were still there and my Google Drive documents were sat there waiting for me to continue work. Setting this up was seamless and extremely easy. If you own an Android handset already or you use a lot of Google services everyday, the appeal is glaringly obvious - it was just so simple to get up and running.
Summary
Initially I saw the lack of installable apps as a major drawback meaning everyday applications such as Office, Outlook and various media players were missing entirely from the system. The idea of not having a traditional office application definitely scared me a little at first but the integration with Google Drive and the ability to edit any type of document, be it Word, Excel or a PowerPoint presentation, left me feeling confident that I could easily use this for my every day work tasks. Listening to my music was incredibly easy as I previously synced all of my music to Google Play Music meaning I could stream it all whenever I wanted. This brings me to a key observation with my Chromebook experience - I was well prepared! I use Google services everyday whether it's for music, storage, search or even navigation and I think many others will do the same. However, if you don't want to jump into Google's world of cloud-based storage and a single login for everything you could ever need in their world then this platform isn't for you.
Most of the services like Google Docs and Google Play Music require some groundwork before you take the plunge. This means uploading all your files from your Windows or Mac machine to the Cloud services before you access all that content via the Cloud on the Chromebook. In short, if you don't put in the leg-work beforehand to get your media uploaded, you might spend a lot of time getting your Chromebook set up with your data.
Overall, for a certain target market I think the Chromebook is a fantastic idea and for anyone who wants to use it solely for business purposes or uses their Google account and Chrome for everything, we're confident the two of you will get along brilliantly. The always-on internet connection element to the system makes it impractical to take out and about without a portable mobile hotspot, although certainly for education purposes and schools I believe it's ideal as you tend to work in a fixed location with a stable connection.