Chromebook R13

Bought one of these last week, with the £100 discount from Currys as I've always fancied a Chromebook. Been using it and setting it up to my preferences for the last few days and I have to say it's been brilliant. Very fast, boots in seconds, ultra secure (and I mean ultra secure) OS, amazing screen, syncs with Google Drive perfectly as you'd expect.

I was gonna go for the Acer 14 Chromebook, but the added flip-a-bility of this one into a tablet was well worth the extra £50.

I am a Mac man (I own 2 iMacs and 2 Macbook Pros - I'm not an Apple man as I hate their phones) but none of them are newer than 2012, even built crazy powerful Hackintosh via TonyMac a few years ago. My old faithful Macbook Pro 15 is from late 2008 and although it's still fast with a Samsung SSD and 8gb of ram, it feels like its starting to show its age just a bit. Mind you, its like a bloomin' Deep Blue computer compared to a Windows machine from the same era...

Anyway, I guess my point in writing this is to let people know that there's more choices out there than just OS X and Windows. Linux is good, I like it, but it can get messy when you run into a problem and it certainly isn't for everyone. I guess I might be lucky in having more than one computer available at any given time, but I have to recommend the Chromebook as an everyday, browser/email/facebook/light photo editor/movies/music/word/excel etc and whatever app you can install from the Google Play Store type of experience.

I've packed my Macbook away to see how I get on, but it's been a pleasure so far....but I do realise this isn't for everyone either.....and if the pic works, look at the Macbook cowering in the background.

Looks smart


I’ve not really looked in to these Chromebooks much.

Do you always have to be online to be able to use them?
My rather limited understanding of them is that they are extremely lightweight, hardware wise, and that they rely on the cloud to do the majority of their processing.
Is this still the case, was it ever the case, or have I got that wrong?

Yeah, I don't think you're far wrong with the assumption that it's a cloud based OS, but I have 64GB of non-cloud digital storage on the device to fill how I choose. I know for me (everyone's different) but I place a lot of trust in so called Cloud based storage and I have accounts with most of them. Chrome OS gives you an extra free 100GB for 2 years as well. And pretty much everything I do requires internet (photo editing or photoshop style work probably not) and it's the way the world is going - internet access is available almost everywhere at a reasonable cost so I think in years to come, this type of OS will be more widespread.

And for all you naysayers out there - I know it's not a perfect system yet and it'll take time to develop, but it's still so bloody young. Look what Google have done with Android in the last 5 years...it's pretty amazing. Chrome OS should develop at a similar rate, all being well.

Look into it, give it a go you're up for it. If not, then plod along as you are....

D.

They don't work with Garmin software so not for me.

If what you do is Web based chromebooks are brilliant for all the reasons you gave. You can even edit videos and photos on the Web now to a pretty high degree.

Sctotboxer if you mean base camp your right however they work with garmin connect. You can also plan routes on Google maps or Google earth and download the file to upload your to you nav via USB.

The newer chromebooks can even use a lot of the android apps now so there are even more options.

Are they good for everything? No, but I will bet they are more than enough for most people if they gave them a try.

Marki_GSA said:

If what you do is Web based chromebooks are brilliant for all the reasons you gave. You can even edit videos and photos on the Web now to a pretty high degree.

Sctotboxer if you mean base camp your right however they work with garmin connect. You can also plan routes on Google maps or Google earth and download the file to upload your to you nav via USB.

The newer chromebooks can even use a lot of the android apps now so there are even more options.

Are they good for everything? No, but I will bet they are more than enough for most people if they gave them a try.

Click to expand...

Pretty much what I think. The Garmin point is a good one too from SB, but I can plan a route either in Google maps, or something like Motogoloco and put the routes on a Miscro SD card and then shove that in the Zumo. Well, in theory I can - I've not tried it yet, but I can't see why it wouldn't work..

D.

Just tried it with Motogoloco and it works a treat. The Zumo is also seen by the file browser when plugged in by USB, so I guess you could add the gpx files to the appropriate folder if you didn't use an SD card.

D.

deksawyer said:

Pretty much what I think. The Garmin point is a good one too from SB, but I can plan a route either in Google maps, or something like Motogoloco and put the routes on a Miscro SD card and then shove that in the Zumo. Well, in theory I can - I've not tried it yet, but I can't see why it wouldn't work..

D.

Click to expand...

Yes it works fine transferring to sd card, just put it in the right folder. I often cary just a chromebook while traveling since they give 12 hours battery life and are small and lightweight. If your model doesn't have an sd card reader you can get a card to usb adapter that will work. I often use these to transfer video from the gopro or whatever as well.