Tag Archives: chromebook

getting started with the chromebook – part 1

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When the Chromebook came out last year, I blogged about the target audience; one of which was people who literally just use the internet.  My mother does four things with her computer:

  1. Internet (email, news, research, etc)
  2. Update firewall/virus scan
  3. Deal with problems
  4. Listen to CDs

I think the Chromebook is for her!  It handles #1 well and eliminates #2/3. (rebooting solves all problems as near as I can tell.)  While it doesn’t do #4, that can be replaced with a standalone CD player.  You don’t need a computer to listen to music on CD.  Being the good daughter that I am, I bought the Chromebook earlier myself to “set it up” and get used to it so that I can provide good tech support.

Disclaimer

If you are a regular reader of this blog, the Chromebook is not for you. You need a “real computer.”  As such I will not be trying to use it as my primary computer for X days as many of the reviewers do.   I will be using it regularly for email/web surfing to make sure I encounter any problems there are and get familiar with how it works to answer basic questions.  I also bought a copy of My Google Chromebook (see review)

Think of this blog post as “how to get someone else going with a Chromebook”.

Picking a Chromebook

Google’s site shows the choices of Chromebook.  There are the original Acer and Samsung 5 models (wifi only or 3g).  In the last few months, there has also been the Samsung 5 550. I was waiting for the “second generation” to buy the Chromebook as I didn’t want my mother to be a true early adopter.  A year after initial release and early in the second generation wave seems like a good time.

I picked the 3g model because my goal is for her to not need home internet.   I’m hoping paying for 1GB data per month will be sufficient.  That’s one of the things I’ll learn in the next month or so – whether it is feasible to rely completely on 3g and not wifi.

Also, note that there is a ChromeBox now.  This is not a laptop.

Buying a Chromebook

You can buy a Chromebook from Amazon or BestBuy.  I was originally planning to buy from Amazon.  Then I read the reviews and learned a few people had problems with the 3g.  I then decided to buy from BestBuy instead so I could return/exchange in store if the 3g was dead on arrival.   About 100 BestBuys in the country actually have the Chromebook in stock where you can buy same day.  Mine does not.  However it was easy to order online and have it delivered in store.  It took just under a week to arrive and I was given a little over a week to pick it up.  My Best Buy did have a floor model of the Chromebook pictured above.  This is quite a change from a visit to BestBuy last July (when it came out and “BestBuy sold it”.)  A year ago the BestBuy floor sales hadn’t even heard of it!

Unboxing

The box is 14.5 x 14.5 x 2.5 inches and not heavy at all.  Good for carrying home from a physical store.  The box even references Samsung’s Chromebook website and the fact that Verizon gives 100MB 3g per month for two years, which is very store friendly.  (And yes, 100MB is hardly anything.)

The box contains:

  1. Chromebook (laptop)
  2. Google chrome sticker
  3. Warranty (call Samsung before going back to the store)
  4. Safety precautions (don’t put the chromebook in the bathtub)
  5. A welcome sheet advertising google services (docs, talk, google+ etc)
  6. Quick start guide
  7. A brown box containing the power cable and AC adapter – the way this box was setup near the hinge of the bigger box, I didn’t see it for a few minutes.  I knew it had to be in there of course so I kept looking.  It is also lighter than I expected which didn’t help.

Assembling

  1. Take the plastic wrapper off the power cord
  2. Unvelcro the power cord and AC adapter to make the wire longer (the AC adapter is 1.5 x3.5 inches or so which feels tiny compared to my “real computer”
  3. Connect power cord and AC adapter
  4. Connect AC adapter to laptop and plug in power cord
  5. Press power key – a real keyboard key – not a button.

To be continued…  Part 2 is where I compare setting up a real chromebook with the chromium OS in a virutal machine

getting started with google os (chromium) – a step by step guide

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I installed Google OS (Chromium really) in a virtual machine to try it out.  It really is as simple as advertised.  Here’s everything you have to do.

The first time you use the computer

  1. Tell the machine how to connect to the internet.  It was ethernet rather than wifi.  Presumably because the VM is networked to the host machine.
  2. Username/password for google account if have one.
  3. Image you’d like to use for identification.
  4. Practice with your touchpad.  You can see this online.  It’s pretty cool in that it picks up on the fact that I have a smart touchpad.    In my Safari browser on the host machine, I can drag and drop and the like.  In my Chrome browser on the guest, I cannot.  Both the laptop and external trackpads work fine in the Chrome browser on guest; it’s just the test page giving me problems.
  5. Usability issue: It took me about five minutes to realize that was it.  It’s a normal browser window from which yo can go to other websites.

The menu

Click time and “open date and time options” to get the control panel lite.  This is where you can say you don’t want passwords saved, set up security and other preferences.  You can also get here by clicking the wrench on the right side of the screen.

If you close the browser, you get the bookmarks bar.  It starts with an option to take you to the webstore which offers both free and paid apps.  You mean you didn’t want to play Angry Birds?  The other built in option is the file manager which appears to host local and cloud storage.  I was puzzled because I thought there was no local storage.

There options for the browser are easy to read.

The second login

It shows your cute icon/avatar.  It took about 15 seconds to launch.  I’m not sure how much of that is Chromium and how much is me launching a computer within my computer.  (For the more technical folks reading this, I imagine starting a real computer is going to be about the same or a little slower.)

who is the chromebook for? a review for senior citizens, kids and students

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I’m getting tired of reading reviews that say the Chromebook is more limited than a netbook and therefore a waste of money.  These reviews miss the point.  Disclaimer: I haven’t touched a Chromebook – this is culled from other reviews.
Cr-48 Chromebook cropped
Who is the Chromebook for?

I can think of a few target audiences for the Chromebook:

  1. Senior citizens who use a computer to check e-mail, view pictures of the grandkids, research vacations, maybe watch some videos on youtube and some other random surfing.  People in this group do not want anything to do with taking care of their computer; they just want it to work.
  2. Young children who are just browsing and whose parent’s want the computer locked down.  (I actually think this case is marginal since children are typically going to use educational software and outgrow it quickly.  I’d favor an iPad with an optional keyboard for this group.)
  3. Teens and college students. I didn’t think of this one but if all you do is write papers, play games and surf the net, why bother worrying about a firewall/virus scan/etc.  I also like that this review was written by a teen – aka someone actually in the target audience being discussed.

You notice who is not on the list: technical people, people who like to fiddle with the computer, people with “advanced” needs, etc.

The reviews

Now let’s look at some reviews of the Chromebook.  Nothing against the NY Times; I read that review first and got aggravated with it first.  Most of the points I brought up there I saw in other reviews as well.

Review Comments Effect on senior citizen audience Effect on young child audience Effect on teenage/college student audience
NYTimes Missing Caps Lock Key This one could actually be a limitation.  This audience learned to type on a typewriter which had a Caps Lock key.  If it is a problem, hopefully another vendor/model adds back that key. Too young to care. Probably wouldn’t mind, but would be savvy enough to use the key reassignment technique to deal with it.
NYTimes No Bluetooth, Ethernet jack, FireWire port or DVD drive. Likely hasn’t even heard of the first three let alone wanting to fiddle with them. For a DVD drive, one can listen to music online and can’t install anything, so who needs a DVD drive. If everything is online this is ok.  If not, should have a different device. Depends on the person.  I can’t imagine not having a DVD drive and being able to install software in college.  But then I was a geek and computer science major.  If someone just wants the internet, it could be ok.
NYTimes I tried valiantly to use the Samsung as my main machine, but by the end of a week, I was about ready to toss it like a Frisbee. … I took four flights with it When was the last time you saw a retired person take four flights in a week and desperately need the computer then? Needs a tablet or game for the plane.  And doesn’t fly that much. Students aren’t known for having the resources to fly so much.
NYTimes But what if you want to run real, brand-name software? Photoshop? Quicken? Skype? World of Warcraft? FileMaker or Access? How will you sync or back up your iPad, iPhone or iPod if you can’t run iTunes? What about the specialized apps that your company might require? If you need any of these apps, you need a real computer and aren’t in the intended audience of a chromebook.  And if you aren’t retired yet, your company should be providing a computer. This is why I think young children would be better off with something else. This would have killed it for me in college.  I needed way too many apps.
LaptopMag But does the $499 Samsung Series 5 deliver as much performance as similarly priced netbooks? They are framing the question wrong right in the first paragraph!  It’s not a netbook.  I actually didn’t take issue with the rest of the review.  It was very neutral and they stated things as facts rather than “limitations” so it is up to the reader to decide if that is something he/she cares about.  Nothing about target audience, but nothing against it either.
Gizmodo Built for the Future, not for the Present Like LaptopMag, the actual review was pretty neutral and stated facts.  A negative rating without any mention of a target audience though.  (and of course it is forward looking – that’s what one does entering a market)
Assorted Zdnet pages n/a While I can’t imagine using this as a work machine, ZDNet extensively talks about a target audience.  (The reason I can’t imagine it as a work machine isn’t because I am technical.  It is because I work for a bank where putting all your data in the cloud and off VPN seems insane.)

I read a number of reviews but it was basically more of the same.  Has anyone seen a review that actually review about how the Chromebook would be for some target audience?  Zdnet was all I could find from someone who has tried a Chromebook.

Conclusion


As Mark Spritzler notes “The thing with the Chromebook, is there has never been a device like this for the actual purpose that the Google Chromebook was created for.” This is precisely the problem I am seeing in the reviews.  Google isn’t trying to compete with existing netbooks or even tablets.  They are trying to create an “internet surfing machine” and reviewers are looking at what it can’t do rather than the benefits.  Going back to our target audiences: they are all groups that will pay the same amount or even a premium for something simpler.  Less complexity which means less problems which means a better experience.