The Good & Bad of a Chromebook

Last Black Friday I bought a Chromebook to replace my ancient netbook.  There are some good things and some bad things about this so far.

The thing I don't like the most is that it doesn't use a traditional operating system like Windows or UNIX.  It basically runs a more robust version of Google Chrome.  So imagine if your whole computer system were just Internet Explorer or Firefox.  It's fine for websites but you can't install any actual programs.  So you can't install, say MS Office or any games.  Which is mostly fine because I'm just using it to write for the most part.

Because I can't install Word, I've been using Google's word processor.  It's OK but doesn't have all the features I'm used to.  The one I miss the most is the smart hyphens for em-dashes.  Before I upload a file to Amazon I have to make one smart dash in Word and then find & replace the rest.

The other most common hassle is this Chromebook doesn't have a right mouse button or keys like "End" or "Pg Down" so to get to the end of the document is somewhat annoying.  I have to scroll down, though first I have to wait until it brings up all the pages.  I mean in Word you just hit Control-End, which also works on normal keyboards in Google Chrome.  There's also no delete key, so you have to backspace everything.  It can be a little annoying.

You can save files in Chrome as Word but I didn't like how it turned out when I was trying to format for Amazon.  The headers are all messed up which makes it hard to make a table of contents.  So I just copy and then paste.  For some bizarre reason you can't right-click to copy; it pops up something to tell you to use control-C instead.  If you can program that text to pop up why not just create the code to right click?  Anyway, there's a slight bit more formatting in Word that way but it's not too difficult.

Though it is designed to pretty much live on the Internet, connecting to WiFi can still be iffy if the WiFi has a login page like most retail places or motels these days.  It's not quite as bad as my phone but still you think it could automatically connect you to the screen instead of having to clink a message saying "it may require you to sign in."  Like I said, pretty much every public WiFi has a login screen anymore so you think designers could make it easier for something that just about requires the Internet to be of any use.

The best thing about using Google Docs is that it saves automatically, pretty much whenever you stop typing.  So long as you have a WiFi connection it'll save to the Cloud.  Or you can set it up to save offline, which is somewhat of a process.  But that pretty much eliminates the need to save and back up.  If you've ever written a few paragraphs or few pages and then had the computer crash without saving, you'll know how annoying that is.  And if it's saving to the Cloud then I don't have to email it to myself or save to a USB drive or anything; I can just open Google Documents or Google drive and access the file from whatever computer I'm using.  So if I type something on my Chromebook, I can instantly bring it up on my desktop.  Or if I write something at work, it'll be available when I open my Chromebook or desktop at home.  That's really convenient.