My Chromebook, One Week Later

Well, its been one week with the Samsung Series 3 Chromebook, and I'm having a great time with it. In fact- its become my go to computing device.

In my last post, I described what I hoped I would be able to do with the Chromebook, and what I thought I would need to do to make it fit into my workflow.

(this is going to get lengthy, so bear with me)

Hardware Review

I won't spend too much time on this, as there are tons of reviews out there that talk about the positives and negatives of the hardware. Personally, I enjoy the small and light structure of the device. The keyboard and the trackpad are very responsive, comfortable, and easy to use. I wish the screen was brighter, but the matte coating is actually quite nice (especially outdoors). I do wish this were a Chromebook Pixel though-- the display on my Nexus 10 makes the Chromebook a bit tough to go back to after reading on it for while. Sound quality from both the speakers and the headphone jack is mediocre, but does well enough playing Pandora and Google Music.

User Interface

The Chrome Aura UI and the setup of the ChromeOS deskop is a pleasure to use. I love having the ability to pin multiple apps to launch quickly.

Google's new Hangouts extension integrates right into the taskbar, which makes multitasking and chatting that much easier. Apps (both native and web) load quickly, and I've only run into a bit of lag once or twice.

Software

Most of the Google apps work well- Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Keep etc.  As long as I have an internet connection, working on documents in Google docs is a very streamlined experience. I find I actually prefer Docs UI to Office...the ribbon interface has always turned me off. Offline editing isnt too bad... but the lack of offline spreadsheet editing is a serious negative. I've otherwise ported completely over to Drive and the Google Docs interface. Pixlr is great for your average image editing, and has helped me realize that I don't need Photoshop except for big projects.

And for everything else, there's Remote Desktop, which works acceptably well.

Summary

Despite its drawbacks, I find myself reaching for the Chromebook all the time. ChromeOS is already extremely functional and has definitely improved my daily workflow. It is leagues ahead of Android in terms of productivity, and will only continue to improve. I think Android will catch up eventually, but for now, Chrome holds the edge with document composing, editing and overall processing capability. 

My Chromebook Challenge

There is a small but steadily growing population of people who are embracing the concept of the Chromebook. The Samsung Series 3 model has been quoted as the #1 selling laptop on Amazon.com several times over the past few months; and there has been a lot of talk surrounding Google's new Chromebook Pixel.

But the question still remains: How useful is Chrome OS as a daily driver for a clinician-student? 

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to try to shed some light on that by writing about my own impressions of using the Samsung Chromebook. I emphasize that this will be MY impression-- this OS may not work as a daily driver for many people (although I think it could), and in fact, it may not even work for me. 

Starting point-- who am I and what do I need my Chromebook to do?  I'm a resident-- still living in that gray area between independently practicing medicine and learning how to do it. There is still quite a bit of studying, reading, and writing (papers, research). I was primarily using a Nexus 10 tablet with a bluetooth keyboard as my go-to device, but it felt lacking from a productivity standpoint. I strongly considered the Surface RT, but I didn't want to shell out another $500+ on a device. The Samsung Chromebook ($249) seemed like a good option to boost productivity while using my Nexus for content consumption.

My plan for the transition:

• The basics- email/calendar/tasks/ideas- already in the Google ecosystem
• Documents- mostly have been using MS Office. I'm planning to port to Google Drive, and maybe use InSync to keep local converted copies on my home computer.
• Image Editing- we will see how Pixlr works... May still need to remote desktop to Photoshop...
• PDF/reading articles- reading should be easy enough, but will have to look into what is available for PDF manipulation, annotation.
• Accessing our hospital systems-- We use Citrix, so figuring out how to get that to work on the Chromebook will be a work in progress.

For those of you already in the Chrome OS world-- I welcome your input on how best to make the transition!


(As a side note...Blogger works really well on Chrome OS)

First Post

I suppose I don't need to post anything "first", but I felt the need to.