To buy a Chromebook or not to buy a Chromebook?

Most of you will have heard about Chromebooks now from the keynote at the 2011 Google I/O developer conference (If not where have you been? Skip to the 40 minute mark to get up to speed on Chromebooks!), my first impression was that they sound impressive but best suited to casual users, seeing as they were pitching to developers though I wondered if this was really the case?

Here’s a recap of some of the positives that they pushed:

  • 8 second bootup time with instant resume.
  • 8 hours battery life.
  • Always connected via Wi-Fi and 3G.
  • Data stored in the “cloud” not on the Chromebook so you can work anywhere.
  • Automatically updated including all software versions on ChromeOS.
  • Security built in, no need to configure standalone antivirus etc.


The most significant point for power users is the fact that these Chromebooks will all be using the browser based ChromeOS, this means that any software added to the Chromebook will have to come from the Chrome Web Store (or does it? more on that soon!) so this seemed a good starting point.

Important applications

SSH Client

The first bit of good news, Chromebooks have an SSH client built in  that can be accessed using CTRL+ALT+T to bring up a terminal window then the standard ssh syntax: ssh <user> <host> [<port>]

This may require a developer mode to be set, it’s available on the CR-48 test Chromebooks that were sent out, I’m quite confident that this would be easy to enable though.

Advanced Text Editor

Whilst much of this would be done remotely using Vim over SSH, work has started on a browser based version available in the Chrome App Store, called Vigor it’s free and open source, I expect this will be looking pretty good by the Chromebooks UK release date of 24th June.

Twitter Client

A good Twitter client is essential for keeping up-to-date and my personal favourite has already been ported – Tweetdeck for Chrome.

Email Client

This seems like an area where I’d need to change my habits, I’ve been an avid Thunderbird user for a few years now and enjoy the flexibility of POP3 and IMAP, at the moment there aren’t any email clients which makes sense with them pushing cloud-based storage. This is something I could get used to, I would definitely need a mail notifier though and probably spend some time transitioning away from any ISP based email addresses to shift all mail to Google MX servers.

Media Player

Even workaholics need some downtime and a media player is essential, whether it’s a Hollywood blockbuster or just the latest Come Dine with Me fortunately Chromebooks have one built in. However with only 16GB onboard disk space and no DVD/Blu-Ray drive you will probably have to put your media on a USB stick, this should get you through a short trip away but wouldn’t compete with a laptop. Some reviews of the CR-48 have indicated problems with speed when playing HD content, it remains to be seen if they will be HD (720p) capable media players in their final incarnation.

Wi-Fi/3G

The general limitations of Wi-Fi/3G mean that the always-on nature of these probably won’t be that useful when commuting, at least in the UK trying to get a 3G reception on a train isn’t going to be likely, and certainly not when flying. It remains to be seen how much more of a limitation this is than on a normal laptop, I’d expect office apps such as word processors and spreadsheets to be available offline.

Jailbreak

Google did announce during the keynote that Chromebooks could be jailbroken however they didn’t go into detail on this. It will at least allow kernel modification and quite possibly for you to install a different operating system. Whilst this option is nice to have it does defeat the purpose of the Chromebook and their always connected nature is where the benefits lie, apart from that it would be an overpriced netbook. This may also mean you can install apps that do not make it into the Google store, it depends what restrictions they place on apps as to whether this is useful.

Summary

Chromebooks are going to be more use to power users and developers than I initially thought, but I can’t see them replacing a decent little laptop, nor necessarily a netbook and this is where it gets a bit tricky for Google marketing. They seem to be pitching it somewhere between a netbook and laptop, a similar territory as an iPad however the iPad wins on portability and style. The area that these best fill seems to be business/education due to the fairly restricted uses and their low costs including support, at $28/m for  business and $20/m for education it will be hard for anyone else to compete in that arena. For personal users I could see people that are new to computer use in general, they should be very easy to use and for people who just want to browse the web and not do anything too complex they are ideal. Not having to worry about updates and security is a great upside, I have a feeling a few IT professionals may be recommending these to friends and family!