Back in 2011 Google announced this interesting compute device, a Chromebook, basically a laptop that ran Chrome and Chrome alone. Out of the gate, I thought this was the most pointless idea I had heard of and, at the time, I thought I was justified in that thought. I mean, this was a device with a low power Atom processor who’s purpose was to go on web pages … Com’on, that is what I have a browser on my computer for.
Fast forward a few years and something interesting happened, Android apps on Chrome OS. Now, I am still not drinking the Kool-Aid here, but that device that was could just look at web pages can now use mobile apps, now that might be useful. Turns out a laptop that is just a browser can actually be useful.
I had one of these little Asus C300M appear in a batch of “broken” machines that I purchased to repair and sell. At the time I did not even consider taking pictures of the damage – the battery was removed and the screen cracked. Of course … the previous owner left their account on it *ugh*.
While I am not going to be ditching my laptop anytime soon, this is an opportunity that I could not pass up and see if I was right way back when these hit the market. The machine was simple to fix, as everything is on a single main board, with memory and storage soldered to the board as expected. A couple of (pricey) replacement parts and quick reset to factory settings later and I have a Chromebook (Pre-Android).
Being essentially a laptop Chrome browser, the first place to start the test drive is definitely web pages. The desktop itself has a task bar at the bottom with the rest of the apps opening up in a menu more Android style. The cool part that I appreciated is that Chrome extensions are supported, meaning that if you have something like an ad blocker or password manager, they are likely to be available on the Chrome book (even one as old as this).
Ok, so the web thing works, that is a good start but what about email? There is a Gmail icon, how does that work? Not quite the way I had hoped, but not terribly bad either.
So the machine does web, not completely useless and the user experience is more or less seamless. Click on and icon and it does something and simply, just opens. This left me with really only a question of files – what of downloads, PDF’s, Google drive, pictures!
This is far from a comprehensive review of a Chromebook, this particular type (the Pre-Android version) is getting older and is not receiving updates anymore. Getting a chance to actually try out this device changed my mind about it being completely pointless… I mean it is still a browser based laptop and I do not plan of giving up my laptop any time soon, but as a device for just casual web surfing or having reference materials on while working on some project – without the fear of damaging an expensive machine should something happen to it – not a bad idea.
Additional thoughts … Sadly this post suffered the similar setbacks to the last laptop post I wrote, I had a good amount of material set aside to write about and then procrastination, doubt, or just plain bad luck set in and the original source was lost. In this case that bad luck was actually a good thing – I was able to more concrete points to cover and discovered that over the course of 2020 this machine really started to show age as several of the sites I had tried earlier did not work properly. Still, not a bad little gizmo, but I am going to keep my laptop for a while longer.