I want to end the stigma. Kids are using them in schools, Grandmas everywhere are buying them for grandkids, and its turns out… they’re actually quite useful! Through sheer brute force, Google has bought a 4th OS choice to the fray and I for one could not be happier! They combine a familiar, Android style interface with lightweight OS and a restrictive, yet secure style of computing rivalling the closed nature of Apple, at a fraction of the cost.
A converted netbook using Cloudready / ChromeOS Flex
And here is a key component of the Chromebook. Like most things we do these days, we use cloud services such as Microsoft 365, Azure, AWS, dropbox, google cloud etc etc. This has the added benefit, internet service permitting, of reducing the physical footprint of our devices down to nothing more than the dumb terminals of old. It seems we have come full circle!
A “dumb terminal” of old, that required a server to work.Early terminals were inexpensive devices but very slow, yet as the technology improved, terminals pushed older forms of interaction from the industry
Wikipedia
Sound familiar? It should do, as this is the very foundation of what makes a Chromebook so successful. Low spec machines used as a gateway to cloud provided services is ideal for the average casual user, who, realistically require a portal to the internet, and maybe a few local apps to present the information in an easily accessible format.
Whereas the terminal of old was able to communicate with a server to present information from a database, and manipulate said data as we would an excel spreadsheet today, the modern Chromebook includes video players, music players, storage and more to enable you to consume your content of choice, and with the addition of external storage, take that content on the road in a budget but performant package.
You would think then, that the Chromebook is great for the kids, or auntie to use as an e-mail machine, but here is the twist. ChromeOS just got Steam released in beta. This means you could in theory build a ChromeOS based PC and play a growing selection of games on a secured OS without any of the extra bloat added to OS such as Windows, or even MacOS, or the complexity of Linux.
Chromebooks come in all flavours and sizes, even desktop formats!So where does that leave us? While I couldn’t recommend a Chromebook for the average power user, or those who want to create content, for a basic user who just wants to stay connected in a time where a laptop / desktop has become all the more important on a daily basis? Absolutely. The low price, and performance of an 8 year old Chromebook (Yes, we recently repaired an Acer that was 8 years old and still runs blazing fast!) means these machines are here to stay.
As long as Google supports ChromeOS in the way it has since it’s inception, ChromeOS will hold it’s place as a main OS for the foreseeable, and at Retrodex, I couldn’t be happier!
Speak to you all soon!
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