Duck It Up

There were two common questions I got after purchasing my Chromebook:  1) What is like to use it?  and 2) Would you recommend it?

If you want to know what it is like to use a Chromebook just open the Chrome browser on your laptop, maximize it so it takes up the entire screen and don’t allow yourself to use anything else.

For the uninitiated, Chrome OS is basically* just the web browser.   Chrome OS doesn’t allow you to install actual applications.  There is a Chrome Web Store where you can “download” web applications, which are really just links / shortcuts to web sites that appear whenever you open a new empty tab.  The user is kept in a sandbox, not allowed to install applications directly or change system settings. (Unless you activate ‘Developer Mode’, more on that later.)  This creates a very secure environment for the everyday user without the need for malware or virus scanners.

Google built the OS under the (completely accurate) premise that increasing amount of what people do on a computer is done through a web browser.  However…

Major Problem 1: Internet Connectivity

Chrome OS’s largest asset is also its obvious weakness: “The Cloud”.   If you don’t have any Internet access there’s not much you can do with a laptop that only runs web applications and so the Chromebook basically becomes paperweight.     

Major Problem 2: Applications

Chrome OS excels at the everyday stuff.  If you want to check your webmail, browse some news sites, visit a social network or two, maybe watch a streaming video on Netflix or Hulu, check your finances or even play Angry Birds the Chromebook is great.   I would imagine that for many people that represents 90%-95% of what they need to do on a personal computer, especially at home.

For work, in place of Office applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, Google offers Google Docs.  While Google Spreadsheets does appear to be able to handle pivot tables and some of the more complex functions required for some of the larger data / business case models I’ve had to build, it is still slow and clunky.  And, I have never been able to properly convert a PowerPoint into a Google Presentation without it needing to be almost completely re-edited.   (Additionally, if you require heavy computing power for resource intensive applications like video editing, Chrome OS is probably not for you.)   

Enhancements to HTML5 and back-end web coding may one day make it possible for all those applications to operate on the cloud, but we are not there yet.  

Minor Problem: Resizing Windows

This is more of a personal peeve but I don’t like that you can’t re-size the windows / tabs in the Chrome OS.  Sometimes I like have two browser windows open at once on the same screen.

My fix for the Chromebook

A couple of weeks ago I installed the latest version Unbuntu Linux on my Chromebook and it has solved all of the problems listed above.  I won’t go though the various technical details of how I did this (there are links that I can provide if you are interested) but now I have the ability to very easily switch between booting up Linux or booting up the Chrome OS.  When I know I just want to do web stuff I boot up the Chrome OS and when I know I need to do something like complex data modelling and/or I’m not going have an Internet connection I run Linux.   Plus, as you can see in the picture above, I can run the Chrome browser in Linux, for those times I really need both functionalities at the same time.

The cool thing is that Google actually encourages this.  There is page on an official Google website entitled “Poking around your Chrome OS device” that shows you how to activate ‘Developer Mode’ and thus allow you to install applications or change system settings.  (http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/poking-around-your-chrome-os-device)  Google has built something that is great, but they admit that it isn’t perfect AND they get that because I purchased this product I should be able to do whatever I want with it.   (Apple, take note.)

So, would I recommend a Chromebook?  Not yet.  I think the Chrome OS might have been released slightly ahead of its time.  We live in a world that’s not quite ready to live entirely on the cloud.

(* For the more geeky folks reading this [Shahid?], Chrome OS is actually a web browser built on top of a custom Linux-based operating system.)