I blogged a while back about getting a free Google Chrome notebook in the mail. I eventually tinkered with it and put an alternate operating system on it. Now they are selling commercial Chromebooks, to be released June 15th. Here are my thoughts.
Too Expensive
The going rate for these things is $350 to $400. For the specs on the device, that is too expensive. One could get a cheaper computer with comparable specs and install Google Chrome on it, just use Google Chrome and nothing else, and it would be about the same thing.
It's an Interesting Idea, but...
As I stated in my last post about putting a new operating system on my device, having just a full screen Internet browser is not as good as a traditional operating system. Currently I am running Ubuntu on my machine, and the browser speed is, as far as I can tell, just as fast. The bootup time on Chrome OS is probably faster, but the difference is a matter of seconds. Plus when I have problems connecting to the Internet (which happens when I go to school, for example) I still have a functional computer. For example, in the class I assist, I used my computer to look up the gradesheet to show a few students their grades. Google Docs was not really working, but luckily I had offline versions of the spreadsheet file; those offline versions worked more quickly than Google Docs ever works for me.
Beyond that, offline applications are, in general, simply better than online ones. We may see a day in the future where that is not the case (given also a sufficiently fast Internet connection) but we have not reached that day.
Privacy
I have also recently come across some arguments that Google is pushing these notebooks so that they can collect user data. Google makes 99% of its money off of advertising; the cynic may argue that all of free the things Google does--search, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Chrome, even this blog, etc.--are all designed to feed the advertising arm of it's company. When one signs into Google Chrome, uses all of the Google cloud applications, etc., one is agreeing to give Google an awful lot of information about themselves.
I'm not really sure what all of the implications of this are, but it does make me weary about using Google services for everything.
Too Expensive
The going rate for these things is $350 to $400. For the specs on the device, that is too expensive. One could get a cheaper computer with comparable specs and install Google Chrome on it, just use Google Chrome and nothing else, and it would be about the same thing.
It's an Interesting Idea, but...
As I stated in my last post about putting a new operating system on my device, having just a full screen Internet browser is not as good as a traditional operating system. Currently I am running Ubuntu on my machine, and the browser speed is, as far as I can tell, just as fast. The bootup time on Chrome OS is probably faster, but the difference is a matter of seconds. Plus when I have problems connecting to the Internet (which happens when I go to school, for example) I still have a functional computer. For example, in the class I assist, I used my computer to look up the gradesheet to show a few students their grades. Google Docs was not really working, but luckily I had offline versions of the spreadsheet file; those offline versions worked more quickly than Google Docs ever works for me.
Beyond that, offline applications are, in general, simply better than online ones. We may see a day in the future where that is not the case (given also a sufficiently fast Internet connection) but we have not reached that day.
Privacy
I have also recently come across some arguments that Google is pushing these notebooks so that they can collect user data. Google makes 99% of its money off of advertising; the cynic may argue that all of free the things Google does--search, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Chrome, even this blog, etc.--are all designed to feed the advertising arm of it's company. When one signs into Google Chrome, uses all of the Google cloud applications, etc., one is agreeing to give Google an awful lot of information about themselves.
I'm not really sure what all of the implications of this are, but it does make me weary about using Google services for everything.
