I <3 my Chromebook.
Sunday, September 11th, 2011That’s all.

That’s all.
Chromebook: Pros and Cons after 7-months
Since early December 2010, I’ve been using the prototype Chromebook (Cr-48) provided me by Google. It’s been fun and, only occasionally, frustrating. I thought after 7-months, it would be interesting to compare pros and cons to summarize the current state. My feeling is, prior to beginning this effort, is positive — I’d buy one. Now, let’s see if I change my own mind.
In conclusion, I feel the Chromebook is well suited to a huge population of computer users.
Supporting these conclusions is the fact that I have, in the course of the past seven months, used the Chromebook, my Windows desktop, Windows on my laptop, Linux on my laptop, my wife’s Apple PowerBook and Linux via dual boot on the Chromebook, and yet I come back to Chrome OS on the Chromebook for the best experience. My main reasons for ever booting another computer are:
Draw your own conclusions Test drive a “virtual Chromebook” on your PC, Mac or Linux machine by installing the Google Chrome browser. See if you can live totally inside the Chrome browser and store everything you want on the web. Whenever you’re tempted to launch another application, check the Chrome Web Store and see if there is a solution that works inside Chrome Browser. Whenever you want to save something, look to the cloud for a place to store it. Then, imagine doing that on a lightweight notebook with incredible battery life and near zero maintenance. Oh, and I didn’t mention the Chromebook boots in about 15 seconds from the powered off state (instantaneously from sleep state).
For the counterpoint to this review see Whatever you do, don’t buy a Chromebook. I obviously disagree. In my view, my computers are very uninteresting devices when not connected to the web. We live on the web today. That’s a fact for most of us.
1. Updated http://hickeyhoo.net . This looks about the same as it did before, but I rebuilt it using Drupal. Drupal is an opensource content management application that does alot of the organizational grunt work. It’s a learning process for me, and I’m just getting started. Thought I’d mention it because the site is a good road map to our various family sites. Nobody really cares about Drupal.
2. I came across UNR Ubuntu distribution customized for netbook computers (UNR = Ubuntu Netbook Remix). I’m using it now, and I like it. It is really fast running on a full notebook, and the user interface is very attractive and intuitive. The distribution installs from a bootable, 1GB thumb drive, and you can run (like a live CD) without installing it on the hard drive. My installation is on a 2.5GB partition. The small partition size provides minimal user storage, but it gives me a true netbook (minimal resource) experience.
Time to resume the yard work. 1 more hour today working under my 3 hour rule — anything is possible with 3 hours effort per day / more effort is allowed only if you really enjoy what you’re doing.
After many (too many) attempts, I finally managed to get SketchUp working under openSuse linux — using the linux wine app (Windows program loader / translation layer). Now I can make my woodworking plans without booting Windows. I think I last had it running when I was using Ubuntu — and, perhaps, on a previous computer. It’s been a while.
PS — Almost as soon as I posted this, SketchUp stopped working. Argh! An update to wine appeared to defeat my fix. After some head scratching (and much cursing) I was again able to celebrate — quietly — at 2 AM.
Just a quick note prompted by spotting an Asus Eee PC on the shelf at Target. The $299, 2 lb. laptop (“netbook”) is available with WindowsXP or Linux. I notice at the Target web site that more models are available. Actually, the units for $359 look like the best choice — larger screen (8.9 vs. 7″ with 1024×600 resolution vs. 800×480 resolution) and more solid state drive capacity (8GB vs. 4GB). There are other compact “netbook” computers that include conventional hard-drives in lieu of solid state drives, but the battery life must suffer. The reviews I’ve read have been very positive, and for web surfing, email, home or school document creation (word processing and spreadsheet), and photo viewing these seem very capable. An external USB drive or online server could provide archival storage if a full blown computer is not available. An external keyboard, mouse, and monitor could be connected for desktop (docked) use. Drool. Drool.
Click on the picture for a cool demo.
I guess what I really like is the design elegance of these little machines. By stripping out excesses in hardware and software, they satisfy 99% of most people’s computing needs (my unscientific observation) with an inexpensive, attractive, compact, and energy efficient solution.
For anyone who cares, here’s verbose comment from a former TechTV geek on why to chose OLPC (while it’s available).
This looks very good — small, light, capable, and reliable — ASUS Eee PC. See CNET review here.
The green Linux box: Koolu!
The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) software shown in the demo is a part of a project described here.
After watching this, I found that there is a OLPC software development kit live CD image available at Red Hat . It appears to be very innovative and full-featured package — with web browser, video chat app, word processor, paint program, calculator, music synthesizer, etoys (hard to describe, a little reminiscent of Apple hypercard), news feed reader, and ebook reader. Not bad for a laptop machine that sells for $200 (targetted for $100 each if and when volume picks up).
Ran into an article on this yesterday — it sounds pretty cool. Zonbu is a tiny (ala Mac mini) pc with no harddisk. It’s available with a subscription for online storage and backup of your data plus automatic software updates. $99 plus $12.95 to $19.95 / mo. subscription (cancellable) depending on your storage needs.
See details at http://www.zonbu.com , and check out the demo video here.