Chomebook thumbs up
I've been searching for a small Windows based laptop until the novelty of a Chromebook captured my interest.
Review sites thought highly of the Toshiba Chromebook 2 (13”); a new, improved version was coming, but with a 1920 x 1080 screen. A friend's older 14” HP laptop is 1366 x 768 - very adequate to me. Found a new “old” Toshiba with that screen, and at a great discounted price. Hurriedly ordered it before inventory was gone.
I've been using it now for about 10 days and am loving it. So easy to “set up” (doesn't even seem fair to use that term). I downloaded the Chrome browser onto the desktop (use Firefox there). Copied the FF bookmarks to Chrome on the desktop (easy peasy). Opened the Chrome browser on the Chromebook and voila! - the bookmarks were there!!
Word or Excel documents sent via email open in Drive, so no problem.
The only thing I've found the Chromebook can't do for me (and I knew this before I bought it) is open a streaming stock charting site that use Microsoft Silverlight. I must use another site for that purpose.
I dislike a touchpad (knew that ahead of time too) but a $15 Logitech optical mouse quickly solved that.
So this is my big thumbs-up for someone who might be considering a Chromebook. Go for it.
Thanks for the Review Juneroses!
Juneroses,
Sorry for this, but I just ran across this article. Bad news for Google ChromeBook owners. Here is a Link to what I found: ChromeBook Hopefully they'll continue to support the ChromeBook owners that currently own a Chromebook. Looks like the new Operating System will be a combination of Android and the Chromebook OS. It's not scheduled to come out until 2017, still another year and two months, minimum.
The Chrome OS project was intended to facilitate production of cheap non-Microsoft and non-Apple laptops. Cheap because they're configured with limited hardware and software and also there's no OS fee. Chomebook products have not lived up to the market performance that had been expected.
Both the Chrome OS and the Android OS were derived from Linux, so from the start they're considered related. Converging the two makes sense. A "Chromebook" can be thought of as really nothing more than a Android tablet with a built in keyboard and configuration for cloud support (Google Docs) of apps and files. That can continue going forward after the convergence.
I think it high unlikely that Google would set existing Chrome OS users adrift without continuing whatever support has been available to date, using whatever means they choose to do so.