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)