DICK POUNTAIN Shiny Chrome is starting to make Windows look tarnished.
After a month with a Chromebook, this Windows devotee is nearly turned by Google’s alternative
Taking on a new computing platform was furthest from my mind, but it just happened anyway. I’m still basically wedded to Windows (albeit 8.1) which I’ve wrestled to a stalemate that works well enough, only needing a reboot around once a quarter. For mobile, I’m equally wedded to Android, via my 7in Asus tablet and HTC smartphone, with Google providing the interface between the three devices via Gmail, Contacts, Calendar and the beloved Keep, plus a little help from Dropbox. But now there are four...
PC Pro’s publisher, Dennis Publishing, is on the last lap of preparing to move office, after over 20 years, from one 1930s block in London’s Fitzrovia to a smaller one nearby. The new offices are extensively refurbished, very much in Silicon Valley style, with lots of wide-open meeting and relaxation spaces and almost no horrid “open-plan” partitions.
The CEO of Dennis is James Tye, who you may remember was once editor of this magazine and is hence very IT-savvy. When deciding the IT infrastructure for the new building, James chose one as radical as the design: as many staff as possible would be issued with Chromebooks in place of PCs, with the company LAN mostly replaced by the cloud. There are exceptions, such as the accounts department, which still needs its servers and software suite, and the designers, who still need to run InDesign, but the LAN will cease to be the main data store for everyone else, and most communication will be via Slack, Gmail and Google Drive.
Dennis is buying upwards of 200 HP Chromebooks, whose 12-hour battery life makes entirely wireless working feasible (the building has designed-in Wi-Fi with three incoming fibre lines for redundant backup) so people can work in places other than their desks. During a tour, I expressed admiration for this brave leap into the cloud, but though curious about Chromebooks, I stressed my Android/Windows devotion. James generously offered to loan me a Chromebook to see for myself if it does everything I need.
What arrived wasn’t an HP but a Dell 13 with a smart illuminated keyboard and magnesium chassis. Specs aren’t everything in a Chromebook as much of the oomph is supplied at Google’s end, but this one looks and feels good, with a Gorilla Glass screen and touchpad that are noticeably superior to my own Lenovo Yoga.
More disconcerting was turning it on to an almost blank screen. On closer inspection, there was an unlabelled round icon in the lower left-hand corner that brought up the Google app launcher, containing the Chrome browser, Gmail, Maps, Calendar, Translate, Keep and all. There were also several of my mobile apps – Guitarists Reference, GIF Maker, The Guardian and Pocket – which I’d assumed I would have to replace. All of my calendar, contacts and Google documents were there already, which is the whole point.
After a couple of weeks, I’m writing this on the Chromebook, in a Google Docs editor that’s just as responsive as the LibreOffice Word or TextPad I normally use. What still drives me mad, though, is the absence of a Delete key: you have to use Alt+Backspace, which my brain knows but my fingers don’t. My brain, meanwhile, has difficulties with the Chrome OS file system, whose use of “download” and “upload” is deeply counterintuitive. I’ve put a lot of my data on Google Drive, but still find it harder to navigate than Windows. I know I should create and store all new stuff in the cloud, but as a product of the PC revolution I need to know my data is on my local hard drive too.
What I do most, apart from writing, is process my photos and program in Python, so how do these fare on Chromebook? After trying dozens of photo editor extensions, I’ve found that Sumo Paint has about 75% of the Photoshop features that I need, but it’s unfashionably Flash-based. As for Python, I can run small modules on the Skulpt Interpreter Chrome extension, but it won’t import all the modules of my large music project. For that, I’d need a full Python 3.4 implementation, which means either installing a Linux distro, or running Android apps (QPython), which the Dell won’t do by default so I’d need to switch to unstable beta-developers’ mode. Both are hassles I can do without. Google is really missing a trick with its failure to properly integrate Chrome OS with Android – a combination that could give Apple and Microsoft sleepless nights.
Specifications aren’t everything in a Chromebook as much of the oomph is supplied at Google’s end, but this one looks and feels good