Using it lightly

I just wanted to say that I am still in love with this Chromebook!  I have been using it for all of my light weight web browsing and I find myself reaching for some of those dedicated keys when I am at work.  Like the new page key or the simple power down feature.  And I love the fact that it only weighs just over three pounds.  I have loaded it up for trips because it's so simple to just grab and go.

Another limitation

I have discovered another minor limitation to using my Chromebook: I can't attach my Garmin GPS to the USB port and expect to address the GPS to upload or download data.  Now I know that some people have figured out how to address the internal file system and therein could manage to move smaller files between devices and the Chromebook.  However, I don't think that most people are going to be interested in learning this "hack" to manage their netbook.  I believe the fact that it would take another laptop to communicate with the GPS is another strike against a netbook.

I still love my Chromebook and enjoy using it for it's intended purpose.  The battery life continues to serve exceptionally well for light to medium web surfing.  If I think that I'm going to be doing a lot of research or media activities I will get the charging cable as required but generally I find it a extremely productive unit.

just playing around

Use my Chromebook last night for some Facebook work and just goofing off.  I sure like this little beauty!

Power consumption

Yesterday's test of tethering my phone to produce a wifi connection was quite successful, in my opinion.  I used the my Nexus One phone to present a mobile wifi hot spot that I connected my Chromebook to for over five hours.  At the end of this period my phone remained fully charged and my netbook was down to about 65% battery.  That's pretty good for almost five hours of continuous web surfing.

My review will continue but my posting will become more sporadic.  I have completed all of the specific evaluation tests that I can think of and now I will simply use the Chromebook as I would use my Macbook.  I will report on general perceptions and results to keep you informed as events unfold.

I will confess that I am impressed with this device.  I was originally reluctant to consider this netbook as a viable option to my Macbook because of the restrictions to loading other applications.  However, as I use my Chromebook more and more I find that it is a competent and capable device for daily use since most of my daily activities are web related.

The question remains if this device can survive in the open market place.  At issue will be on of flexibility versus functionality, at least in my opinion.  What I think about when I consider divesting myself of one of the two devices that I use:

1. Does this unit contain all the tools and applications that I need to complete my daily, weekly, and monthly computing tasks?

For me, at least, I am at a critical crossroads in a decision making matrix as far as my analysis is concerned.  A perfect real-life example of this point was presented this weekend when we hosted my daughter's baby shower at which I was taking over 150 pictures as a photographer.  For most, the Chromebook would satisfy even this need.  However, I find myself using Adobe Lightroom to sort and edit my photographs before presenting to Shutterfly, Picasa, or  Flickr.  The professional photographer, although retired, will not allow me to simply upload images that are not "presentable" without post-processing.  That means I need access to Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom, or both, to complete my work that requires extensive local storage to facilitate my post-processing requirements.  This example is just one that illustrates the specialized needs of one atypical user where a netbook like my Chromebook will inevitably fail.  However, this doesn't mean that the Cr-48 has completely failed.  What I have outlined, also identified by others on other sites within other evaluations, is the hybrid nature of a netbook and the idea that one tool or device cannot fit all needs.

I think that ultimately, I will be ready to surrender this device to someone that can employ it's capabilities to satisfy some specific requirements that it was designed to excel at supplying.  However, for me, I continue to need my Macbook with the expanded hard drive to store, sort, and access multiple files and programs that exceed the capabilities of "apps."  Apps are fine and do a great job to provide a lean service to many.  But apps can't answer all needs.  At least, not at this time.  Things may change and the evolution of the online music industry that may ultimately provide online access to a cloud database of personal music could evolve to include video-on-demand from the cloud.  From there it is only a short jump to applications on demand from the cloud.  I think we may be a significant period of time away from that level of sophistication, but I see it happening someday...

Until then, I am stuck with a full blown laptop to satisfy my needs.  I am pleased to be participating in the beta testing and evaluation of the Cr-48 and I am honored that Google included me in this program.  I intend to continue to use my Chromebook as well as use Chrome on my Macbook as my primary browser.  I wholeheartedly recommend Chrome to anyone interested in a full function browser that exceeds my expectations.  Google rocks!  I am a committed Google guy and look forward to the tools apps that Google will initiate and provide.

Power Supply

My Chromebook ran great all weekend.  Of course I didn't use it much on Saturday because we hosted a baby shower for my daughter.  But Sunday was Super Bowl XLV and I Facebooked more than normal during the game as well as quite a bit of web surfing prior.  Power levels we great all weekend I didn't plug up to charge until Sunday night.

Today, I will continue with using my Nexus One phone as a tethered wifi hotspot but I have decided to throw a curve into the power usage.  I have connected my phone to the Chromebook because my Nexus One will run out of power before the eight hours of my normal workday so by connecting my phone to the netbook I can maintain my wifi connection for an extended period.  This will test the ability of the Chromebook to supply power to my phone while simultaniously powering the netbook.  This would be a normal configuration for this device, especially while traveling so this is the next level of review/testing for this nice little machine.

multi media capabilities

The Chromebook has an interesting design feature that has impressed me.  I'm talking about the placement of the speakers on this unit.  They are on the side of the base facing out away from each other.  This placement creates a very interesting sound effect that is large without being loud.  I have found myself looking around for the "echo" effect that I've noticed while using the multi-media elements of the Internet.  Right now I'm listening to Pandora and the sound quality is nice.  It's not going to "wow" any of the audiophiles that you may know but it's better than my Macbook.

I access Hulu yesterday to check out the system ability to stream video and audio simultaneously while watching a TV program and was equally impressed with both the video and sound quality.  Now, let me say that I'm easily impressed by getting TV and movies on my computer so you may find this performance element somewhat less impressive, but I really like the way this net book performs.

What I have been very offended by is the number of people selling these units on Ebay!  I find this extremely immoral as well as unethical.  The way I see this, if you didn't intend to participate in the test/evaluation of this unit, why did you accept delivery.  I think it takes a very creepy sleazy looser to abuse Google in this manner. Just my opinion but y'all that are selling these things online need to serve some jail time or suffer some form of punishment for your abuse.

Hey, thanks for stopping by today.  Sorry for the rant but those guys just got my ire up.  Let's ignore them and have a great day!

Time for some bad stuff

Ok, I've been very supportive and constructive so far about this new Chromebook.  Time for some criticism.

I really like the keyboard.  It's almost exactly like my MacBook keyboard.  It's a bit rubbery feeling but the tactile feedback is very good to me and the layout is very efficient if a bit smaller that a full keyboard.  I don't have any trouble typing on this keyboard at all.  One thing though, is that if you leave the mouse in the middle of a paragraph and accidentally forget about the track pad and bump it while typing, your cursor will jump to the middle of paragraph and begin inserting what ever you type.  This took a little getting use to because what I have figured out is to be careful where you leave your cursor while typing.  I have learned to plant the cursor in the lower right hand corner of a window when I am typing, like now, and then I don't have any trouble.

Another thing about the keyboard is the lack/loss of all the function keys along the top row.  I almost never used them so I won't miss them because they always seemed out of place for a normal computer user and since you can't add a program like Photoshop that uses those keys you just don't need them hanging around cluttering up the landscape.  I have found that I like navigating with the forward/back buttons that replace the function keys so I expect that I will come to rely on the other keys that live on the top of the keyboard in the same way.

The cover, base, keys, and the entire unit has this rubbery feel to it.  While this texture can provide a sense of security when you are carrying your Chromebook, it may have some draw backs also: my wife had a similar finish on a motorcycle helmet that she purchased.  After about six months of heavy use, the rubber stuff started peeling off her helmet and it was ugly.  It was like her helmet had some kind of skin rash infection stuff and look dirty all the time. If this happens to the Chromebook it will be very ugly as well.  I let you know.  The initial report of this surface treatment is good, but time will tell.

I feel...weird...about not being able to install another application or look at a jump drive.  This unit has a port for an external monitor as well as a USB port for a USB device like an external mouse/pointer but if you plug a jump/thumb drive into the USB port the system will not recognize that anything has changed and you can't see the drive.  I know that you really don't need an external drive for transporting files from this machine, since everything lives in the cloud, and if I sign onto my Google Chrome account on another machine that all of my documents will be there waiting for me, but it makes me feel weird.  Almost a weird as weird as that run on sentence.  But that's how I feel.  It doesn't affect the function of the machine and I expect that this is something that I'll be able to get use to as time passes and I become more confident in my use of the cloud, but, it's just,...weird.

An update on the power comsumption: I ran this thing pretty hard yesterday and plugged it up to recharge last night at about 9:30 pm.  At that time I still had 43% of the battery remaining.  Pretty good overall.

Missing menus

One thing that is conspicuously missing from the Chromebook is the absence of the Windows task bar and the menus that are normally hovering around as you work.  In this case, there is only the search bar from Google Chrome at the top of the page and even that appears to be wonderfully minimalistic to me.  This might bother other people because you can't use your normal thought processes to find things.

This absence of things to find may be a blessing or a curse depending on the user.  Some techy kinds of people are gonna freak because you can't reach under the hood and mess with lots of settings like in Windows.  I have fooled with lots of Windows XP and Windows 7 stuff already and find most of those types of settings an annoyance to even need to bother about and it always seems that as soon as I change one thing, something else starts to act funny or break.

In the case of this wonderfully sleek Chromebook, there are a few settings that you can personalize and if you really feel the need to look "under the hood" you can find some of the technical information relating to memory use etc,  but for the most part, this machine is lean, clean, and simply fast.  You could see a lot of what is happening by downloading a copy of the Google Chrome browser to your PC or Mac and simply run that as your only method of operating applications and you'll be able to experience the primary functionality of this Chromebook.  You'll have to discipline yourself to resist using your normal desktop applications and get started using the Google cloud complete with all those applications.  That way you'll be able to get the full experience of Google Chrome.

I've been running this Chromebook almost non-stop since I unplugged it this morning and checking the power gauge shows that the current battery charge is at 60%.  Not too bad for running full out for six hours including a spreadsheet, multiple posts to this blog, and my  normal email activity as well as reading some other forums and blog sites.

I'm tethered to my Nexus One cell phone right now for Internet access and it is still running very quickly.  So far, I'm very pleased with the experience.  Thanks for stopping by.  I'll keep posting here to let you know how things are going.

Recharged and ready to continue evaluation

I plugged this baby in last night just before bed time because I had run the battery down after playing with it non-stop for almost four hours.  I didn't check how long it took to charge because I was sleeping but when I unplugged it this morning the power indicator showed 100%.

I have attempted to activate the free Verizon 3G wireless connection four times but have received an error message every time.  The connection status shows that I was connected to Verizon but the activation was only "partially complete."  So, I reported that to Google as an issue.

I just weighed this unit on the postal scale and with the battery it weighs 3 lbs 10.5 ounces.  That's pretty good.   The screen is almost identical to the size of my MacBook.  The keyboard is very close to the feel and use of my MacBook as well.  The track pad is a little weird to get use to because there is no delineation between the area that you use for scrolling and the place for clicking.  It is possible to adjust the sensitivity of the track pad and I have set my very low in order to allow simply taps instead of actually needing to click the lower portion of the track pad.  For right clicks you have to hold down the Alt key and tap.  There is no Delete button but there is a back space button and if you hold the Alt key and hit the back space button it will work just like a Delete button.  This is also the same way my MacBook works so I am not surprised and find this "normal."

My new netbook, free from Google, Cr-48

I arrived home today to find my new Google Chrome Cr-48 netbook computer sitting in my driveway, literally.  I have spent the last two hours reading the very small amount of information that was included in the box.  There were three different pages of information that were shipped with this little machine.  The set up was automated and when I turned it on at 6:18 pm after installing the battery, the system started automatically.  I spent a long time reading the license agreement to be sure of what I was getting into, and because I don't normally read those agreements, it took longer than normal.

After the set up and logging into my Google accounts to sync my gmail as well as my Google Chrome browser, everything was working great.  And it's really fast.  The initial charge to the battery was at about 45% so I am still typing on that charge and this thing is saaawwweeeeet!

It is my plan to use this as my primary machine for the purposes of testing this machine.  I signed up a few months ago for a free trial machine and I couldn't believe that it was here when I arrived at home.  So, this is my first post about using this new trial netbook machine.

I was able to attach to my home wifi network without any problems and I am looking forward to using my Google phone, my Nexus One, as a wifi hotspot and really run this box through the mill testing the limits of my wireless connection as well as the abilities of this machine and the Google Chrome system that has been pre-installed.

Stay tuned for the updates as things develop.