Wednesday, August 7, 2013

ChromeBook - Is it worth it?

This past weekend I purchased a ChromeBook for my wife. It had 4 gigs of ram and an 16 gig SSD for $299. The hardware was solid, light weight and very quiet with a 14 inch screen. Setup was very easy, just sign in with your gmail account. There was no need to install Office as Google Docs were available by default. Boot up was under 20 seconds, very impressive.

I browsed the Chrome Web Store and installed several apps like Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Drop Box, EverNote & RDP. The available apps both performed well and never crashed. My surprise was that the Chrome Store has a limited number of apps compared to the Android Play store. I understand these are 2 different operating systems but being both from Google, I expected more. Apps like Skype, Opera and Dolphin Browser were not available. In face, since the ChromeBook runs it apps inside the Chrome browser, no other browsers could be installed.

After 5 days, we returned the ChromeBook. The product would be good for the my mother who only sends email and browses the internet, but for a seasoned user, the functionality is lacking. If all of the apps you use are available in the Chrome Store, great buy a ChromeBook. Otherwise, save yourself the frustration and go with Windows or OSX.