Is 2015 The Year You Buy A Chromebook?

I would love to buy a chromebook but what stops me is the fact that I can't run gotomypc from it. I can run gotomypc from my cell phone but it's just not practical.

EDITOR'S NOTE: See http://askbobrankin.com/free_remote_access_and_screen_sharing.html

Cloud sucks mop water when traveling. And Comcast Xfinity hates their customers. Those are the only two drawbacks to Chromebooks that I see.

So,right you're. I purchase my Samsung Chrome book just before X-mas and I'm tickle to death w/the quality and especially w/the price. I'm hopping now that all my transactions are secure.

The question will become, in the next couple of months I would guess, 10" tablet with android or 15" thin laptop with Chrome OS. Once you pair a keyboard with the tablet and case, the weight comes close to the Chromebook. Google Nexus 10 vs Google Chromebook. Interesting proposition.

I have gone completely Chrome this year. Have a Chromebook laptop and a Chromebox with 32" HDTV for monitor on my desk. Everything just works - no waiting for updates, no crashes, no malware issues.

And there are plenty of apps that work offline as well. All of the Google services (GMail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, etc) can be set up to run offline without an internet connection. So its not just a brick....

No Chrome book for me until they are compatible with Microsoft stuff.

Why not just offer a PC with NO software or operating system installed and let us find a free one? Thinking Linux here.

I bought a Chrome book a year ago, and I have mixed feelings about it. It's not nearly as useful as my desktop PC for normal day-to-day usage, but my objective was to have a thin, light-weight, inexpensive device for traveling. Unfortunately I can't connect it to the Internet while flying in a plane (unless I pay an exorbitant fee to the airline), and it's very limited in functionality all by itself. It's useful in my hotel room or at a meeting (if I can get a decent Wifi connection), but in a pinch I could use my Galaxy 4 smartphone to perform the same functions (albeit with a much smaller viewing screen and no keyboard).

So the chromebook is okay, and it's an improvement over a dinky netbook that I also have. But in hindsight I probably should have spent the extra money to buy a lightweight-but-powerful laptop that could run all of my normal software.

"The Windows paradigm has always been “locally,” on a customer’s computer that has to keep getting bigger, faster, and more expensive to keep pace with upgrades of Windows." What a load of nonsense! I have Windows 8.1 running on a 7 year old Lenovo. No one would be disappointed with its speed. The Celeron CPUs are not all "wimpy". I have Windows 8.1 running on a Celeron G1620T based computer and it does an excellent job. I'm a little puzzled as to the motivation for this article as it seems to be lacking your usual impartiality.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm glad you enjoy your laptop, but the CPU Mark score of the Celeron G1620 relative to top 10 common CPUs puts it dead last. (cpubenchmark.net) Celerons tend to be a good low-cost option, but they are not known for speed. According to Wikipedia,

"... their performance is often significantly lower when compared to similar CPUs with higher-priced Intel CPU brands. For example, the Celeron brand will often have less cache memory, or have advanced features purposely disabled. These missing features can have a variable impact on performance, but is often very substantial. While a few of the Celeron designs have achieved surprising performance, most of the Celeron line has exhibited noticeably degraded performance."

My motivation is to inform you of your options, and about current trends. I have no axe to grind, no horse in the race, no dog in the fight.

The real drawback is that HUGE areas of the inter-mountain west (Great Basins and Ranges) and most of N/NE Cali is the lack of ANY kind of web-signal - Even a mile from a 'large' town (1, 000+) signals from phone lines are so corrupted and dirty with such slow speeds running a program, even with current Lap-tops and Desk-tops, the Spinning Wheel of Death is far more common than the earlier Blue Screen of Death. I guess that's the price one pays for living in a 'captive' area - an area where you are completely at the mercy of your local ISP and phone/cable company (often one and the same). Thus cloud storage of programs would make this kind of cloud-based storage next to impossible to run. Thank God I only live there part of the year - and even then it's a good two plus hour drive to the closest wi-fi connection to get books for my Kindle. The saddest part is that with such a 'quaint' population, there is little reason for ANY utility to run clean lines. Heck I'd bet that if you put more memory in an 8088 you could surf at the same speed as a screaming i-7 hooked up to a 14.4kb/s dial-up. (E.g. not at all). Only with the i=7 notebook/desk-top you still have programs resident and could cut your time in half or more by not having to wait for the two-way connection between you and he Cloud. While it looks empty- there are almost TOO many people out in that area anyway - just another reason to regulate the Web like we do Power and phones - everyone gets to have it - not just the people in the big cities. The REA was not a bad thing.

My biggest reason for not buying one is gaming. If I can't make the WoW Guild Raid, it's not going to take up room in my bag.

Cloud printing caused me to abandon my Chromebook and go back to my PC.

What about privacy? If I do on-line banking will my account numbers and passwords be stored in the cloud? I realize that nothing is safe with all the malware these days but I feel safer knowing that my info is not out on a cloud waitng for some hackers who are looking for mass data to steal.

Hi Bob,
I was startled to learn recently that cloud computing is generating a huge carbon footprint. This report claims it now exceeds that of the entire airline industry.
Is this true? What responsibility do we all have? What can we do about it?
Regards,
John

I'd love to run chrome OS for a specific computer that keeps getting screwed up because Luddites + Windows + Internet = Fail (tires of cleaning the crap out). Problem is, the main purpose of that box is to access a service that only supports IE.

In Australia Chromebooks cost from $400 up. Not good value for the money. BTW Bob, quoting a Wikipedia article about Celerons doesn't convince me. Try one of the latest ones (G1840)and you might be surprised. I did not accuse you of having an axe to grind only of not your usual impartiality. Not the same thing. There are down sides to owning a Chromebook which I have read in other articles. In this article you fail to mention any.

I will not buy Chromebook or any other book, or hand watch even if that will be the newest mode of the 20/20 generation, lol. I like PC, and as big configuration as feasible. And I want to use of that expensive capacity! Evidently, I hate M$ eats up most of my hardware capacity not to mention my time to keep Windows running safely if that is possible at all. Windows is an outdated monster software sitting and eating up everything like an elephant in a limited place with limited resources. And that unwanted monster is prone to anybody's bad will who has limited brain power. Is there an OS which is similar to the good old computer operating systems that do just operate the hardware as simply as possible without fancy stupidities?

I would be interested in a Chromebook, if I were not on a metered service, my non-terrestrial internet connection only gives me 250 MB per day other than off hours, 2:00 to 7:00 am, and a 600 to 700 mS latency.

Didn't like my comments about chrome but I don't care, Google sucks and would never use it for any thing. Will stick with tried and true Microsoft. Thank you.

I have and love my Chromebook. I vowed to get away from Microsoft and all the licensing fees as well as the constant upgrades, fixes and patches. Not just Microsoft but other software programs too. I love not worrying about updating files, for virus protection as one example but all programs on my PC laptop and desk computer need updating during the year. There's none of that with my Chromebook. It's also noticeable that when I open the Chromebook it connects to the Internet in about five seconds. So, the end result is the Chromebook is faster to connect to the Internet, does not need updating versions of programs and I can do almost anything I could do with my PC's, with rare exceptions. It's a no brainer in my opinion.