Chromebook Updated

Well, how are you? You've changed. Something new? A haircut. No wait, you're wearing a different lipstick. You've had your dodgy knee replaced with a titanium one and now you're gambolling along like a race-pig.

Oh! You've changed OS. That's...   ....interesting.

Well it is actually. It probably shouldn't be but it is. Here I am listening to The Orb and blogging while zootling (*real word*) along (*why doesn't blogger recognise the word 'blogging'? Or 'blogger' for that matter*) at 300kmh on a TGV while all the time existing in a state of 'writing'.

Don't get me wrong. Windows is a better product than many people give it credit for. Like many people, I have been irked for a long time by the lack of alternatives. I believe that competition not only stimulates innovation but that it drives that innovation through a race to the bottom. That innovation becomes the everyday standard which in turn leads to new innovation. It is one of the great problems with patents in a fast moving industry. I guess Apple was always an alternative but somehow I have never got on with Apple. I have been an iPhone user in the past and, surprise!, I really like Apple hardware. I don't like the cost but  think people will find that Apple are getting along just fine with all that profit. No, Apple was never for me because of its closed ecosystem. Everything has to be Apple and I think that somehow,  Apple's ideology got lost in the race to be cool.

This is what happens. The rising competition caused Apple to innovate. The came up with the iPod and their innovation was to be cool. That caused a race to the bottom and suddenly all their competitors became cool too. Next innovation please Apple. Well I think that the next innovation will probably come from a competitor. That competitor may well be Google. They have so many different projects and things going on that one of them is bound to catch on. Nobody expected Android to work but it has. When Google arrived people used lycos or yahoo to search. Google did it better. Now everyone follows Google. Facebook mail and Apple mail and Windows Outlook is being overhauled. Following Gmail. They do things really well which is what I like about them. Even if it seems too late. Too late to release a browser/operating system/email/social network/cloud computing system? Nope. We'll do it anyway and while other people rest on their laurels, we'll do it better and cheaper.

So Apple released a netbook? We'll release Chromebook. There are not too many Chromebooks on the market. I took a bottom of the range one. The Samsung Chromebook. It is small and not very powerful and has no Hard Drive Space. Normally, they cost 299€ but I bought one that had been returned. It was 279€. Samsung are offering 50€ off if you fill in a thing and send it off and I had 50€ in gift vouchers. 179€ for a new laptop and a complete change of OS.

OK, it's a first world problem thing, I know, but 179€ for a trial seemed OK so I have given it a go. It is innovative, I'll give it that. It is very light and very very fast. A lack of offline apps is a pain but I guess that Google is an online company so that is to be expected. I have offline Docs and offline Gmail and I suppose that's all that I need. I had some problems making sure that I am connected to Drive where I store all my documents but I have set up my nexus 4 as a WiFi hotspot. I open blogger and close my connection. When it is ready to publish, I will switch the hotspot back on and bingo.

The Apps are getting better and better and they are all written in HTML5, which means that theoretically they should soon work anywhere. Only having to write one app for all the different OSs that we have out there should reduce overheads and stimulate the next round of innovation. Native apps require a lot more tlc. I'm very tempted to learn how to write HTML5. It seems the way forward. That way, whenever I don't have the app that I require, I can write it myself.

The only app related problems that I have had are with twitter and an image editor.

I don't really like tweetdeck. I used to use it a long time ago but never really got on with it. I understand the point of it, in that it gives heavy social network users a greater amount of control, but I am a 'less is more' kind of guy. I like to keep things simple and would have used a twitter built app if they had one. They don't and so I am going to use tweetdeck. It's not the end of the world.

The biggest problem I have had is with an image editing app. I have a good number of bitmaps that I created in MS Paint. It was the tool that I had to hand when I started making these images and today the majority of my world maps are saved as .bmp files on Google Drive. Great. How do I edit them without MS. Paint? After a lot of trial and error and a considerable amount of advice from the Chromebook Help team in Google Groups I have started using Pixlr and it seems to work like a charm. I am still a novice in Pixlr, for example I haven't tried to copy and paste yet, yet I retain high hopes for it. Set your brush size to one and your brush hardness to one hundred and you can edit on a pixel by pixel basis.

So that's it. No more windows for me. I have moved over to Google completely and I hope that it works out. It has certainly inspired me to blog and tweet more. It has also got my pen elbow moving again. I finished another chapter just before I started writing this blog. If it doesn't work out, I can simply export it all back to windows again.

179€ is a first world experiment to see just how good a Chromebook is.

Google, it's in your hands.

D.

P.S. It's 23:11 local time and I was drinking steadily from midday to nine o'clock this evening. Both chapter and blog may be a little loose and rambling. Sorry.