Disclaimer, I worked on this product, but left before they released it. Summary: I'm going to install Ubuntu, mainly because of trackpad configuration and VPN.
Chromebook best attributes: - Hardware itself is decent - battery life, size and weight are decent; keyboard is pretty nice, and I can configure the silly search key to be CTRL easily!
- It just works. I could give one to my mother (at least if they fixed the trackpad driver)
- Price point seems reasonable for the hardware (much nicer than a el-cheapo netbook, so that's not a fair comparison).
- Login = Google auth. This works great for me, saves me signing in twice for Google features.
Chromebook worst problems: - Double click on trackpad does right click. This is INCREDIBLY irritating. Because it's a top hinge trackpad, the amount of force it takes to press is inconsistent, and you need too much force to press it near the top. Hence I scroll with right fingers and click with left thumb at the base of the pad, which sets off right click half the time. This alone will make me return it, or install Ubuntu. Fine, maybe some people like this, but give me an OPTION to disable it.
- No VPN or rdesktop. I need this for remote access to work. The killer lack-of-feature. Citrix might fix that, or maybe not.
- It's a bit slow, hopefully the next generation will be faster, if it gets the same chipset as the new macbook air.
- Wifi reception seems a little weak.
- VGA dongle. Why do I need a dongle for this? Asus EEE at least embedded this so I always have it with me.
Frankly, if they fixed the first two, I would be pretty damned happy with it! Other things they could improve: - I wish they'd get more websites to allow Google auth, I'm tired of having 500 stupid logins and passwords.
- No Netflix streaming
- Mistyping a URL gives a very confusing error message. Come on guys, this isn't Internet Explorer. "Unable to connect to the Internet. Google Chrome can't display the webpage because your computer isn't connected to the Internet.". That isn't appropriate for a non-existant domain name.
- Developer mode effort seems theoretical and half-hearted. Pain in the ass to reinstall a different OS. Doesn't seem like you can boot from USB.
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posted Jul 30, 2011 2:39 PM by Martin Bligh
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