So we wanted to buy one of those brand spanken new Chromebooks. The idea was to take Google’s stance on netbooks and use it in our households as a light, easy going secondary machine, especially when on the move. Since we all have Google accounts, there shouldn’t be much else to think about…
But then, come the 14th of june, second thoughts ensued. While it is true that most of the time we spend our time on the web browser, and the best of them all is by far Chrome, and while we are more than willing to try out something new all the time, there definitely are instances where you need something like a desktop – even a netbook can be able to output your music or videos on the go, and that can be nice on a train or wherever you choose to carry your little machine.
But the big hassle can really be 1) printing and 2) using your netbook as a word processor on the go.
1) Chrome OS lets you use a printer by linking your printing orders to an external machine, which must be running Mac OS X or Windows. So, you need to set up that other machine first, tell your Chromebook that it’s supposed to send the print jobs there, and then finally print your files and docs. You can do this directly if you own a Cloud ready printer that can connect directly to the Internet – but that is hors de question for our little 20€ HP printer (*cough cough). The whole thing is called Google Cloud Printing Service – you need access to the web in order to print.
2) We would want to use the Chromebook primarily as a productivity machine (with some Plus thrown into the mix), and the answer then would be Google Docs. As we’re noct using Google Apps, we’ve been using Docs as a sidekick to our normal productivity, when we just want to quickly share a spreadsheet or text file with others and then download or print the outcome. It hast served us well in that regard. But I wouldn’t wanna work on my primary large Libre Office document with web apps. I just need the functionality of a big, offline, single purpose word processor. Some things Google docs simply cannot handle.
While still going back and forth between those two points, I think I am just go ahead and order the machine (in Germany, it’s done exclusively via amazon) and see if we can tone down printing to the least amount necessary, and split big, important docs into smaller Google Docs versions in order to work on them on the Chromebook.
If all goes well, I’ll keep you posted!
Love, Nanausicaa
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Second Chromebook picture by Virtual Leo. Thanks.
