I've been madly in love with my Samsung Chromebook ever since I shamelessly stole it from my early-adopter husband (and I'm not the only one who's done this, I've found). Its tiny price, feather weight, cool operation, and long battery life perfectly fit my use case for couch surfing and family travel. My high-schooler is now inseparable from her $99-refurbished Acer as well. Chromebook seems like an ideal consumer product. (Not so Netbooks, which, if you recall, dragged and groaned trying to run Windows on cheap hardware.)
But now I think I spy ChromeOS poised to storm the enterprise as a "does enough" thin client OS, despite organizations' significant fear of relying on the cloud. From what I see, demands on IT are only increasing:
- Reduce IT dependence and complexity
- Provide hyper-portable devices
- Lower hardware/software costs
More importantly, a convergence of must-have features is brewing:
- Offline mode, for getting work done without network access
- VMWare and Citrix support, for remoting to full desktop applications
With the new "desktop-as-a-service" (DaaS) subscription model, Chromebooks can serve up virtual desktops, not just web pages. That's a game changer that I can carry to a meeting, a client site, or a coffee shop!
Hi -
As a brief introduction, I found you through an article you wrote for Intercom, the magazine of the Society for Technical Communication. I'm a new technical writer.
I just read your post on ChromeBook, and it's one of the first positive posts I've seen. What excites me about it, though, is the possibility of using an Internet-dependent device OFFLINE. I tried a netbook once, with an expensive cell phone contract, and returned it within the 30-day trial period because I couldn't get a good signal in my own home, and it took an extremely long time to download anything (even simple things like Adobe Reader or Open Office). Needless to say, I was unimpressed.
I currently have both a smart phone and a tablet (both running Android) and I use them constantly. The one drawback of the tablet is the lack of an external keyboard for lengthy typing, such as composing blog posts. (the bluetooth one I bought stopped working after a month).
Anyway, enough babbling - I just wanted to say, I found your post interesting - and I'd like to see more, maybe a longer review of features and/or software available for the Chromebook. Because, as much as I like my Android personal electronics - I rely on Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat X Standard for writing documents and processing them.
Posted by: JackieOMoleski | October 31, 2014 at 09:46 AM
Thanks, Jackie! I will definitely dig deeper into options for Chromebook as a work machine. Seems every day I hear about new angles (such as Adobe offering cloud-based use of their tools) that brings that reality closer.
Posted by: Mary Connor | October 31, 2014 at 08:32 PM