My Chromebook Summer.

Right around the beginning of summer my Dell Inspiron 1750 finally died on me. I had the computer for several years, ran linux on it, refurbished it a couple times, but when the case cracked and the hard drive acquired several bad sectors I decided it was time to retire it.

I had just bought a Samsung XE500C for traveling. It was a small lightweight laptop, with all day battery life, that fit comfortably into my backpack.

I was pretty impressed with the tiny laptop right from the start. I decided to try the little Chromebook out for the summer. I couldn't find a laptop I liked anyway, and using the Chromebook really wasn't that bothersome for me. Why not save some money and see if I could tolerate the Chromebook for the summer.

Well, summer ends in a few days and here is my final review. For the most part I can say it worked out pretty well. I had zero problems with the OS itself. No serious crashes. I think the screen froze maybe three times if that. I found that in itself pretty impressive considering I use the Chromebook daily at least 8 - 10 hours a day, sometimes longer.

Software choices are limited. I never really found a graphics program that was comparable to GiMP. I also found it rather difficult to do any decent video editing. I could only find one FTP program that worked well for me. It was actually a Chrome extension and they discontinued support of the Chrome extension after the last update.

Coding html, and CSS was fine with the Chromebook. I did have to get creative coding in PHP or Python. I found it bothersome enough to put those projects on hold till the end of the summer when I purchased a new non Chromebook computer.

I don't really game, so I can't really comment on the gaming capabilities of the Chromebook at all. I'm guessing you would be limited to what's available, and the games couldn't be memory exhaustive due to the limitations of the Chromebooks onboard memory.

I think it's important to note that not all Chromebook's are capable of running Android apps. This was something I didn't know. The Samsung XE500C does run Android apps and it really does open you up to a world of possibilities for apps and software. Had the tiny Samsung not had this feature, I feel my experience with the tiny machine would of been far less satisfactory.

I really enjoyed the way the laptop worked with my Chromecast too. I was able to watch movies and play music over my home entertainment center. I could also cast the screen to my tv set. This comes in really handy when sharing information with guests while sitting around the living room.

Overall using the Chromebook for basic computing was a pleasure. Google docs worked as an adequate word processing program. Chrome is a great browser. I had no problems trading crypto currency or stocks. For the most part, things worked out pretty well.

There are a lot of things I didn't like though. For one thing, not being able to upgrade the memory or the hard drive space. I added a 32GB sd card and that was about the full capabilities of upgrading the machine. I'll admit I like to tinker, add memory and play around under the hood. This isn't really possible with Samsung XE500C.

I absolutely hated the machine for graphics, and video editing. I found a few workarounds for my needs, but nothing that was even close to adequate. This is something that is really lacking in the Chromebook ecosystem. I imagine this has to be a deal breaker for a lot of full time users. I'd love to see an app that's comparable to say GiMP or Photoshop.

As I said earlier, coding anything other than HTML and CSS was also a real nightmare. For the most part, I loaded up my Raspberry Pi for any serious coding needs I had. The Chromebook is fine for HTML and CSS, but not really for any serious programming languages IMHO.

One of the biggest things I couldn't get past are the privacy implications with Google. Everything goes through Google servers. All your data is stored in your Google Drive, images are stored in Google Photos, and I was really surprised to discover that if you hook up to a printer, the print job goes through a google server first, then to your router, then to the printer. WTF, really? I found that incredibly odd.

On top of all this, I've taken serious issue with Google over the treatment of several Youtubers, and the way the company is now treating alternative news and media. As much as I'll admit I enjoyed using the Chromebook, I'm on a mission to try and de-Google as much of my life as possible. That's a personal choice on my part and has nothing to do with the Chromebook performance. I will say though, that as soon as I get a new laptop or desktop, I'll probably retire the Chromebook for good. At the very least, I'll create a dummy google account, that will only be used for the Chromebook, and just use it as a travel computer to stuff into my backpack when traveling around. For basic needs I really did like the device.

Google politics aside, here are my final thoughts. If you are a basic computer user, meaning someone who checks email, surfs the web, and does a little social networking on say Facebook, Twitter or some of the other social sites. The Chromebook absolutely rocks. The OS seems almost bulletproof for basic users. Updates are done automatically. The computer really seems to take care of itself. Considering every time my mother's computer breaks and I'm the one that gets to fix it. I'd love to see her get one of these. For a basic computer user who isn't concerned about sharing ALL their data with Google, these little Chromebooks rock!

If you're a high end computer user, meaning you code, game, and do a lot of graphics and video editing. I really don't think this is the OS or computer for you. If privacy is an issue, you definitely want to stay away! At the very least it's a fun, easy to use device for basic computing needs. Honestly, getting through the summer with this wasn't to difficult. I'll be happy to return to a Linux OS and a more powerful laptop but, using the Chromebook full time really wasn't as challenging as I thought I'd find. it. At times you just have to get creative, and having a Raspberry Pi sitting around for basic Python or PHP coding certainly helps.