7 Days With a Google Chromebook

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7 Days With a Google Chromebook

Posted by Soulskill on Monday July 18, 2011 @09:02AM from the potent-portables dept.

jfruhlinger writes "Now that Chromebook laptops are finally here, the question is: can you really do serious work with them? The only way to find out is to dive on in, and so Steven Vaughn-Nichols spent a week using a Chromebook for all his daily computing tasks. In the end, he was mostly positive on the experience — but was frustrated by a number of rough edges, including poor documentation and a failure of some components of the system to work together."

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"Documentation"? by John+Hasler · 2011-07-18 09:15 · Score: 3, Funny

That's so twentieth century. Isn't everything supposed to be "intuitive" now?

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Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
1. Re:"Documentation"? by Cro+Magnon · 2011-07-18 09:19 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  The only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything else should have documentation.
  
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  Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
2. Re:"Documentation"? by tyme · 2011-07-18 09:31 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  take the word of one who has procreated: even the nipple is not an intuitive interface. A shocking large number of newborns (including my own daughter) need to be trained to nurse!
  Yeah, it shocked me too.
  
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  just a ghost in the machine.
3. Re:"Documentation"? by should_be_linear · 2011-07-18 09:33 · Score: 2
  
  Here on /. proper nipple documentation is required too.
  
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  839*929
4. Re:"Documentation"? by tbird81 · 2011-07-18 10:40 · Score: 2
  
  I think his point is that he likes Apple a lot.
5. Re:"Documentation"? by Filip22012005 · 2011-07-18 17:43 · Score: 2
  
  I use my iPod about once a year and can never figure out how to turn it on or off. I feel like a n00b.
  
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  When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?
6. Re:"Documentation"? by strength_of_10_men · 2011-07-19 01:17 · Score: 2
  
  I've got two issues with your comment.
  One: the GPPP(whatever) was comparing the entire ChromeOS with and iOS app. It was ridiculous to begin with.
  Two: I was exactly in the same situation as the author of the article - how to do a screen shot. For me it was on my iPod Touch. How the hell do you do that? I had to Google it to discover that Home button + Sleep Button will put a picture in the photos app. Not the most intuitive combo and there's no way you would figure that out without help or documentation.
  And when iOS added "multitasking", I double-pressed the home button expecting to see the music player controls pop up. But I see this row of icons appear beneath the dock. What the hell was that? Some googling gave me the answer. Turns out it was the Task Manager.
  The fact that the user base of the iOS is orders of magnitude larger than ChromeOS might account for the dearth of documentation. Word just gets around on how to do certain things in the iOS. But it's certainly not because it isn't needed.
Questions... by girlintraining · 2011-07-18 09:17 · Score: 4, Funny

If you have to ask 'can you really do serious work with them?' the answer is NO. If you answered anything else, your standards for 'serious work' are too low. I mean, can it run Crysis at 50 FPS, full screen, across two 24" LCDs at native resolution? How about calculate pi to a billion digits in 1 second? Solve the national deficit, make you a sandwich, and build itself a new body from spare parts found in your garage, interface with the internet, and spread its consciousness to all computers, everywhere, sparking a massive revolution? Yeesh. You people and your limited imaginations.

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#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
1. Re:Questions... by serviscope_minor · 2011-07-18 09:38 · Score: 2
  
  f you have to ask 'can you really do serious work with them?' the answer is NO.
  I know you're being facetious, but...
  The device sounds great for travelling with its light weight and long battery life. It's a really good job that trains never go through tunnels or have sucky mobile reception. It's also good that all planes allow mobile phone usage and etc...
  As for "real work", if your real work includes basic office-like tasks, and email via a webmail client, then sure. If not, then this doesn't sound like a great laptop. And I say that as someone who does real work frequently on an eee 900.
  
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  SJW n. One who posts facts.
Can you develop on it? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-07-18 09:23 · Score: 2, Interesting

Thats the only question I care about, can I work on my projects?
1. Re:Can you develop on it? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-07-18 09:31 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  You probably wouldn't want to compile things directly on it, but it does have a terminal you can use to SSH into a better dev environment.
2. Re:Can you develop on it? by serviscope_minor · 2011-07-18 09:40 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Why would you want to?
  Because it looks like a pretty nice netbook.
  It's called using the right tool for the job.
  The tool in question is a generic CPU connected to all the usual laptop extras (screen, keyboard, mousr, USB, etc). In other words the machine is a fully featured laptop. This tool should be able to do anything that a similarly specced tool can do. If not, then it is artificially limited by poor software.
  
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  SJW n. One who posts facts.
Re:Yay cloud! er... by PC+and+Sony+Fanboy · 2011-07-18 09:44 · Score: 2

But the hardware sounds quite nice. Does it run a proper distro yet?
Yup. Tonnes of people do it. There's a switch behind the battery to set it to developer mode, and it opens up the computer to all sorts of fun. IIRC, it's just an intel atom proc inside...
The real question should be... by Deathlizard · 2011-07-18 10:08 · Score: 3, Interesting

Is a web browser worth $350-$500

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In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
All you need is a command line by Riskable · 2011-07-18 10:09 · Score: 2

I dunno, while I don't have a Chromebook I *do* do serious work with Chrome (the browser) every day and I'm not talking about web development. All you need to do serious work, is a decent terminal program:
http://vimeo.com/24857127
Gate One should be available for public consumption soon. I hope to make it the best damned terminal program/SSH client that ever existed. It is already superior to PuTTY (as long as you don't need port forwarding or X11).

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-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
1. Re:All you need is a command line by yarnosh · 2011-07-18 17:09 · Score: 2
  
  Who would have imagined, the major selling point of a computer is that it has... a terminal program. Yeah, that kind of says a lot about the mass market potential of the Chromebook. Meanwhile, this is the year of the Linux desktop...
Re:Summarize for you by PCM2 · 2011-07-18 10:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

Sunday: Had a problem with a website I like to access that has nothing to do with this hardware, but I felt like blaming it anyway. Kind of like kicking the dog when the local corporate owned sports team loses a game.
It has everything to do with the hardware if the only way to access POP mail on this specific hardware is to set it up to work with Gmail (or some other Webmail service). Real-world users may have to confront this issue.

Monday: I'm the only person in america who prints stuff at home instead of forwarding it to work and I also pretend I only have access to exactly one computer, this one
You may find you have not yet met everyone in America. I print stuff at home, and I would even if I didn't have a home office. I also have more than one computer. I have a networked printer that lets me print wirelessly from any device with the correct drivers, which are available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (yes, from the manufacturer). There are no drivers available for the Chromebook. Instead I have to use Google Cloud Print, which means leaving some other computer running as a print spooler for my (already-networked) printer. That's dumb. You also lose all of your controls for the printer when you print that way -- you can't set print quality options or anything like that. If you print often, the Chromebook is lame, period.

Tuesday: I hate all touchpads made in the last decade and this has a touchpad therefore I hate it.
That's not what he said. He said the Chromebook's touchpad is lame, and he's right. It's big, but fidgety. It's multi-touch, but it doesn't support any kind of gestures beyond clicking and scrolling.

Wednesday: To do something complicated, I had to use google to look something up.

I think he points out succinctly how poorly designed the Chromebook UI is. If you have to go on Google to find out some obscure Ctrl-sequence to do something, because there's no manual and no online help to point you in the right direction (you even have to Google the hotkey to bring up the list of hotkeys), then the device is not intuitive and casual users -- probably the only kind of users this type of device will ever have -- will have problems with it.

Thursday: I found a single missing MIME type. A legit complaint.
It's not a missing MIME type. The Chromebook file browser can't browse files. The only file types it understands, that I can see, are JPEG, PNG, MP3, MP4, and OGG. AVI is not supported. Neither is DOC, PPT, XLS, or the OOXML equivalents. Even ZIP files don't work. Pretty much every single file type you might save on the Chromebook's drive shows up as a simple grey icon, and double-clicking it achieves nothing but a message telling you the file type is unknown.

Friday: I know this is a netbook for online work, so I'm gonna trash it for not doing local stuff very well.

Really? And here I thought he was complaining that it wouldn't work with Dropbox, which is an online service. He's also right about the local file handling. Are you really telling me you don't ever expect a coworker to hand you a USB drive with a few files on it? With the Chromebook, you won't be able to do anything with those files until you upload them to Google Docs, and if they're in a Zip file on the USB drive, you're going to have to find another computer or ask someone to open it for you.

As a hatchet job, it was fairly well written. As a technical standpoint, its basically a bug report about a single missing MIME-type that somehow dragged on to a 6 screen wall of text
So kind of like how your wife doesn't listen to a thing you say, throws out straw-man arguments, and keeps repeating them over and over when there's nothing else to disagree with, you're gonna do the same thing your wife does?

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Breakfast served all day!
Cloud Print on linux by Rick+Richardson · 2011-07-18 10:24 · Score: 4, Informative

FYI, Cloud Print service: $ git clone https://github.com/armooo/cloudprint.git Cloning into cloudprint... remote: Counting objects: 109, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (107/107), done. remote: Total 109 (delta 47), reused 0 (delta 0) Receiving objects: 100% (109/109), 31.77 KiB, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (47/47), done. $ cd cloudprint $ root python setup.py install [snip] $ root pip-python install daemon Downloading/unpacking daemon Running setup.py egg_info for package daemon Installing collected packages: daemon Running setup.py install for daemon Successfully installed daemon $ cloudprint -d Skipping test-raw Updated Printer test-1020 Updated Printer test-c310dn Updated Printer mc2530 Updated Printer mc1600Wc Updated Printer aaaa Updated Printer mc2300c Updated Printer test-1500 Updated Printer test-okiC110 Updated Printer test-clp315 Updated Printer cp1025nw Updated Printer test-p1505 Updated Printer xrx6110 Updated Printer test Updated Printer test-Oki-C3100 Updated Printer p1505n Updated Printer test-p1102 Updated Printer test-cp1025 Updated Printer test-C3300 Updated Printer test-1680MF Updated Printer clp315 Updated Printer test-hp2600 Updated Printer hp1020 Updated Printer p1102w Updated Printer HP-LaserJet-Professional-P1102w Updated Printer hp2600 Updated Printer cp1215 Updated Printer p1102-hpcups Updated Printer Cups-PDF Updated Printer test-clp300 Updated Printer GnomeManualDuplex Updated Printer p1005 Updated Printer test-m1319 Updated Printer HP-LaserJet-1000 Updated Printer test-p2035 Updated Printer mc2530c Updated Printer xrx6110c Updated Printer test-CLP-610 Updated Printer test-KM-1635 $ Then: $ firefox http://www.google.com/cloudprint/manage.html And on your Android tablet: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.pauloslf.cloudprint Works good here.
Arrogant journalist....that has no meat. by PrimalChrome · 2011-07-18 11:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

Normally, I'm not the kind of person who reads documentation. You see, I make a living from analyzing technology. In an hour, I can get the hang of a new operating system. In four hours, I can tell you what's wrong with it. That said, there are some times even someone like me needs documentation. And, boy does the Chromebook not have documentation.

So Mr. Vaughan-Nichols has a very high opinion of himself.....and yet somehow with one of the simpler platforms it took him seven days to figure out what he can nail in 4 hours with a complex OS. Read the article....wasn't impressed. Sounded like journalist drivel. All fluff and no meat.
But will it run linux? by sunderland56 · 2011-07-18 13:12 · Score: 2

7 days with new hardware, and not even the urge to install linux?
"Now that it's finally here"...? by TheBrutalTruth · 2011-07-18 13:47 · Score: 4, Informative

Really? Have had mine for 8 months... And all of you haters - USE ONE. Really. Please try before you comment on it - about it's limitations, it's unsuitability, it's not good for daily tasks, etc... Maybe it's because I don't play WoW or some shit in my parents basement - but for what I do, email, surfing, music - it's perfect. Instant on, and iPad battery life (the cr-48 anyways). And free wireless for 2 years? Even at a paltry 100MB/month - perfect for when the bloodsuckers known as PEPCO or Comcast go down. Just enough web use for emergency usage. And it tethers to my phone just peachy. It DOES have local storage, GPS, Bluetooth, etc. Just get r00t, weenies... Most of all - it's WIP folks. My cr-48 updates constantly (reboots faster than you can blink) and it's been neat to see it evolve - rapidly - over just 8 months.

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Enlightenment is a pipe dream. So where's the pipe?
Re:persistant WiFi? yeh right by earls · 2011-07-18 13:56 · Score: 2

You're fly like a G3, son.