Out of curiosity and because I wanted to test this new type of computer, I bought an Acer C720P Chromebook on Google Play for €308,99 and used it during a 5-week trip to Asia. My point here is not to compare Chromebooks with other existing devices (if you are interested read this excellent article on ZDnet), but to summarize 6 things I learnt during this “computing journey”.
You need to unlearn the way you use a “traditional” computer
Using a Chromebook is like driving in England, Japan or Australia and all these charming countries where the driver seats on the right side of the car: you know what to do, but it takes some extra efforts to get used to it. On a Chromebook, the way you store information and get access to it is totally different because everything is related to an account, not a machine.
This sounds quite obvious, but you have to actually live it to realize how it radically changes the way you use your device. For instance, if you share a Chromebook with a friend or a colleague using 2 different Google accounts, you will not have access to any of the files stored by your co-user on the computer. This is actually a great feature to share a computer with minimum privacy. But if your co-users want to check their emails and watch a video stored locally by you, they will not be able to see it from their own account or on “guest” mode.
Universal access to the cloud does not exist
I used my Chromebook during a trip to several places in Asia. In Singapore, Vietnam and Hong Kong everything worked perfectly. Once in Mainland China, it became terrible because Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive do not work there. I could not work on an Excel or a PowerPoint file. I could read them but it was actually impossible to modify them. I used instead an old Windows 7 PC that someone gently lent me and a USB key! Cloud services are incredibly easy and convenient, except when they do not work… And in the case of Chromebooks, you have no alternative, unlike any notebook that can run PowerPoint or Excel locally.
User experience actually means something
The Chrome OS UX reminded me that user experience is not (only) a buzzword. It actually means something. If you use Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, it is very good. I also tested it with a Chromecast to watch YouTube videos and the experience was quite convincing.
But working with this machine can really be difficult. For instance, I still have not found how to insert a column into an existing Excel file while using Google Sheets. Maybe I am not smart enough, maybe I should have bought “Google Apps For Dummies” first, but this is typically what UX is about: making it simple and intuitive for the user.
I also noticed that most of the time when I plugged a USB key, it did not appear into the “file” application, so I had to unplug it and try again several times before it did. All these small details tended to make me a little nervous…
At some point, I also remembered that my Acer C720P had a touch screen. But even after all this time, I still cannot figure out why. There is absolutely no application using the capabilities of the touchscreen for other things than “click” or “zoom”. Is this touchscreen really necessary? I am not sure.
Design: surprise me please!
On my Acer Chromebook, there is a sticker that says: “A new kind of computer”. Really? Of course there is the nice Chrome logo on it. But from the outside, this machine is not different from an old netbook or a $200 Windows notebook. To be honest it did not take me five weeks to notice that. But as I have not removed this sticker, it now strikes me how poorly innovative Chromebook designs are in general, compared for instance, to remain in the same price category, with an 10” Android tablet with a keyboard.
Connect or Die
I also realized than one small thing was missing on my computer. A simple piece of plastic and metal that makes a huge difference: a SIM card… In a world where LTE is faster and much safer than public Wi-Fi connections, how could you not propose a cellular data service on a device that loses 90% of its possibilities if not connected to the Internet? Price is probably the answer, but I am sure there are many heavy cloud service users that would consider buying Chromebooks if they could provide an independent cellular data connection.
A glimpse at the future of computing devices
However harsh I have been about Chromebooks in this article so far, I remain convinced that they somehow give a rather good idea of what the future of computing may look like.
With tons of applications and software updates, it could become actually much easier for private users and companies to rely on cloud services combined with simple and cheap terminals rather than buying expensive devices that need updates almost daily. At least for some portion of the market, there will be opportunities and Chromebooks will have contributed to create them.
You can also read this post directly on LinkedIn (click here)