6 months with the chromebook.

Life with Chrome, the Half Year Review

Order and Shipping

I ordered my chromebook from Amazon.  The process was painless and quick.  I received mine the next day and to my surprise it was already half charged.  

The chromebook arrived without any defects or issues and worked right out of the box.  I was already part of the "Chromebooks" community on Google+ at the point and have heard of a few incidents where a return was needed due to some defects and was a bit worried.

Setup and First Impressions.

Getting things setup was as easy as the ads promise.  Log in and all my settings started filtering on down.  

The first thing I noticed was how amazing the keyboard was.  It is by far the best keyboard on a laptop I have ever had.  It's like typing on a cloud.

I have rarely ran the battery down to empty, but when I occasionally do I get 5-6 hours out of my favorite machine. Sense this is a travel laptop and for casual browsing use the battery life for me is very acceptable.

I have found that when I know i won't be using it I will turn off WiFi before I close the lid and let it sleep.  This little step really extends the charge when not in use. 

Shortcomings

This chromebook is not a heavy hitter when it comes to horsepower.  It is meant for browsing and does it really well.  When I was at the Best Buy store I compared the sARMsung to the Acer model side buy side and on bigger sites like TheVerge and Wired I noticed the Acer loading about 1/2 to 1 second quicker.  Now granted I was using the tried and true one mississippi, 2 mississippi highly accurate benchmark method.

The case is very plasticy and has some give, along with the speakers that I would not use the word quality to describe them.  I use bluetooth headsets or ear buds as of habit and rarely listen to media out loud so it was not a hindrance for me.

This was my first laptop with a matte screen and took a bit to get use to, and now I really enjoy the absence of glare.  The screen has proven plenty bright for me.  I often use the it on the deck with my morning coffee and have zero daytime issues.

Bragging Rights

The killer features for this laptop for me have been the weight (2.4 lbs) and no fan.

This laptop has replaced my win 7 dell machine when I'm on the go.  Before having my work and Dell laptop was noticeably heavier.  When I started taking the sARMsung I often double checked because I thought I forgot to pack it.

If you haven't enjoyed a no fan laptop experience, you are missing out.  It is the ninja of laptops and now when using one with a fan I notice it with the same irritation as the trains in town the blare their horns incessantly.

Another very useful feature is the Chrome Remote Desktop (CRD).  This allows you to control devices through the Chrome browser.  I don't use this too often but when I need to access some tool on a machine that is on a windows, linux or Mac it's a lifesaver.  Setting up CRD is dead simple and involves assigning  a pin to each device to gain access.  Then as long as the machine is on you can dive right in.  I will point out that you cannot at this time remote IN to your chromebook.

Final Thoughts

I really enjoy my Samsung Chromebook.  This is a perfect casual browsing machine for on the go.  I am a hobby coder and after using my chromebook for a while I was inspired to learn html/css/js and am currently working towards writing my own apps.  My next chromebook will need to be on the ARM architecture or if they can make a Haswell variety fanless I'll be doing a happy dance.  I would recommend this for casual browsing while on the go.  If you find yourself having many tabs open all the time you might want to look at an Intel chipped model.

Thanks for reading.