OT ish; Chromebook

[The Medway Handyman]

Do any of the many clever people here have a view on the Chromebook? I understand it uses a different operating system? e.g. not Microsoft?

In plain English please :-)

[Huge]

[Andy Burns]

It isn't Microsoft, it's Linux (but the idea is the user shouldn't care what it is, it just keeps itself updated and they simply use it) so if you run any software that's specifically Windows only, it won't run that obviously.

They have relatively small amounts of storage (flash memory instead of a spinning disc) as you're intended to either read stuff that's online with them, or store your own stuff online, so you need to have Wifi or

3G coverage for them to be very useful.

Not played with them very much, an IT manager for a large NHS trust got one as his retirement present, when I spoke to him later he's over the moon with it.

[newshound]

There are plusses and minuses. Bought one for my wife a few years ago because they were very cheap, now laptop prices have come down in comparison. It is relatively fiddly if you want to share files with PC users. You don't have to buy software to do the basic stuff but you are locked into Google's ecosystem. The cloud environment is good, no need to worry about backups etc as long as it is always used in a wifi environment. More fiddly if you are using it "offline". Microsoft has caught up in providing comparable cloud services. Wife continues to use it in preference to her newer Win 8 laptop even though the battery is knackered so that she needs mains most of the time.

I quickly decided these were not for me (but I work in a Windows environment). Daughter thought about getting one to use on the train on her commute, but decided against; now uses Ipad and Kindle.

So they are viable for "simple" user who just wants basic WP, email, browsing, shopping, and can be used in a community who share data provided "pc" users don't mind working with Google Docs files. Probably fairly secure compared to Windows.

[A.Lee]

Linux operating system for mobile devices, including some laptops (mainly the lightweight smaller cheaper ones) Far more stable and secure than a Windows OS.

I've recently bought a 9" Tablet with Android OS at £38 inc. delivery. Expecting it be be rubbish, my expectations were some blown away, as it is an excellent device. I've got 150+ page manuals which open faster on the tablet than the laptop sat here.

[Adrian]

I've been toying with the idea of a cheap tablet. What one did you go for?

[stuart noble]

Plenty of horror stories out there about Google's online storage. Google Drive, Google Sync, Google this that and the other bloody thing. Great when it's working but they keep "improving" things, and nothing they do is particularly intuitive to my mind. MS is the devil I know.

I've got a £50 Android tablet which is a bloated mess of apps you can't get rid of but does work well for the very basic stuff.

[Bill]

I'll jump in here as by accident I seem to have ended up with a bunch of cheap tablets. All of these seem excellent, and each cost between £26 and £45. Makes/models are generally unimportant and I suspect most are just badge-engineered from major makers (one I saw was offering, I seem to remember, deliveries of up to 30,000 per day). All the cheap Chinese ones I have suffer from poor internal loudspeakers, but the audio is fine on headphones. Internal mics vary from awful to average. Because I was trying to do several different things, I gradually ended up having to move to a greater range of facilities. The rule seems to be, if it doesn't mention it, it probably doesn't have it. My 9" tablet has low resolution, which I didn't pick up on in the advert, but has 10-point touch. I have no idea whether this is better than the 5-point touch of the other tablets. To my surprise, I found it didn't have bluetooth. I was trying to get something to interrogate the car's diagnostics. Many of the cheapest tablets don't have bluetooth.

Of the tablets I have, the favourites are an Ainol AX3 (bought secondhand but unused and missing the back because it had been nearly installed in a car dash). It's a quad-core phablet, so it has Bluetooth, GPS, etc, and 2 sim slots. Great for sms with the big keyboard. The mistake was the MediaTek MTK-8312 phablet. I bought one new and it arrived with a dodgy micro-usb charging socket. While not knowing the response from the seller, I saw and bought the Ainol. The seller replaced the MTK, so I kept the 2. MTK is 2-core, and feels a little slower, but it, too, does everything I want. Both these have very average battery life. Oh and the Ainol came with a load of apps in Chinese. I was thinking of taking it to my local takeaway and asking what they are. I only recognise the Chinese version of Opera.

The thing I use every day is the obsolete Blackberry Playbook. Excellent audio and video for recording and playback, GPS ok, wifi has some quirks, but great battery life, 64G memory. I mainly use it for the alarm clock and listening to radio from around the world, but have made videos of musicians with it. Probably a bit late for the sell-off of these now, though. The real leather case was 25p in a bin in PCWorld.

Today, I would buy a phablet and check the screen resolution, bluetooth etc., and try to check audio quality. All except the 9" are 7", which is a bit small for some websites and a bit big as a phone.

[The Medway Handyman]

Thanks.

If I used a memory stick with a WORD doc for example, would I be able to read/edit it?

I assume I could use a USB stick to store stuff?

[Andy Burns]

Yes, using Google Docs, if you've used any fancy features of Word, the doc might not be 100% faithful to the original and need some minor tweaking.

Yes.

[Adrian]

Yes, of course - but you'd have to be online to use Google Docs to do so. THAT's the big problem with Chromebooks, not whether they're MS or not.

[The Natural Philosopher]

read yes.

Edit? maybe. probably need to install libre office.

Or a networked storage device I'd gay. Not sure if it has Ethernet available, but it must have wifi.

[Adrian]

Ta. I presume "phablet" is phone/tab cross? We've got no need for a phone in it.

[Bod]

Adrian, I don't know if it *must* be a Chromebook you're after, but the Tesco 2 Hudl 2 8.3" tablet is due out next week and it's got a good write up in this link, £129 and Tesco vouchers thrown in.

Mebbe worth a butchers:

[Adrian]

I'm hijacking a different thread here. Definitely not a chromebook for me.

Yeh, I'd heard that was on the way - and was what re-prompted my wondering.

[The Medway Handyman]

Don't bloody start that again :-)

[Tim Watts]

Becoming popular with schools, for which it is a *very* good fit.

It does "enough" (web, office-stuff, email and now some android apps too) but it looks after itself more of less as well as an android phone.

So the software support issue is greatly reduced.

[matthelliwell]

My wife and daughter have one each. They do what its says on the tin. The o nly significant problem I've had is printing. You can't print directly from them unless you have a Google Cloud Print ready printer. Assuming you don' t, you'd need another computer to act as a print server.

[A.Lee]

I was surprised at how good it is. I rooted it, and got rid of all the ads, added a few apps - office, ad-remover etc, dolphin browser, and it runs great. The camera is not up to much, but probably on a par with a cheap phone.

[dennis]

8<

A homebase worker?