Chromebook - Go or No??

[Corey J. Mattson]

Can anyone give me honest reviews of a Chromebook?? Anyone got one I can see up close?? Thanks.

Corey

[Bryan Berg]

I think Andy Bernard has a few at PEM, and we're looking at one next week here at D-E (one of our staff bought one, and I'll use that to get a feel for what they can do!). What's your thoughts? I'm leary about the thought of putting all my eggs in the Google basket. The offline options make them more usable for the students than I once thought. But I wonder about other things - Chromebooks as a possible testing option, GoogleDocs is nice, but there are aspects of use that are frustrating, and some that I know don't work with some assignments teachers presently do. How well does video editing work? If it's like smartphone apps, those - pardon me - suck. I've seen Chrome web-browser issues that aren't deal breakers but sure are annoying, and I haven't played with printing options (tho, if the kiddos couldn't print, maybe that's not a bad thing anymore). Management seems to be doable with the web-application (like managing GoogleApps for Education), so that's a plus. Andy knows a lot of the ins and outs for that.

[Corey J. Mattson]

we are looking at a 1:1 for our MS. iPads aren't our choice as of right now, we are thinking laptops, but we use School Web Lockers for our cloud storage for students. Chromebooks would move us to Google Apps, taking us out of the market for a subscription-based cloud storage...lots to think about.

[Bryan Berg]

I might just buy one myself to play with it. The $250 price tag sure is intriguing. Wonder what it takes to repair, or to load the OS on them if a HD goes bad? I've never looked into that!

[Brian Moskalik]

We purchased one for testing.  I may be the wrong individual to rate it, but I found the chromebook to be exceedingly frustrating.  What could take a mere click to open and edit documents, instead turns into download this file, import it into google format, then work on it.  No indications what so ever that you need to do this, so you sit there scratching your head wondering why you can't edit the data in front of you.  This device has largely been ignored and now just sits on our shelf.  Seems like an expensive web browser, and not much else.

[Corey J. Mattson]

i found that they don't work well with our wifi...don't automatically move from AP to AP...not what i want!!

[Bryan Berg]

We bought a Chromebook last week to do some testing with....I figured there would be the usual Google Docs processes for working on files. The issues that I wonder about is if Docs is enough for the students. It's not perfect - kids struggle with adding pictures, and forget about anything needing columns. Those are workable, though...columns can be somewhat reproduced (in some ways with better results) with tables, and sometimes the picture issues are more to do with students not knowing how to set the border and text flow settings. But is what the Chromebooks offer enough? Is MS Office or OpenOffice needed? Can either run on a Chromebook? What about other software? GIMP? Video conversion? Video creation? what if the Chrome browser has issues, can a different browser be used? CAD or AutoCAD? Testing? Blender? Classroom Management (like Insight)? Those are the kinds of questions that have to be answered.

So, Brian - have you found that working with Google Docs on a Chromebook is different than working on Google Docs with any other type of computer? Google Docs can work as easily as a click to open and edit once a document is stored or created in GoogleDocs, at least that's been my experience. Existing documents in other formats always will require the upload process - and to edit to convert to Docs format. That's been the case for web-based office-style products since the days of Ajax way back in 2003 (which didn't work on IE, because the Ajax developers hated Microsoft...they admitted that right on the Ajax website...it only worked on Navigator, Firefox (which was new) and Safari! But what about existing GoogleDocs documents? Those should be easy to open and work on. But maybe the Chromebook does something different?

I'll have to try our Chromebook on the wifi and see if it acts the same on ours as it is doing for you, Corey!

[Corey J. Mattson]

we're finding that the going back-and-forth with office is terrible with google docs. there's a certain criteria that you need to follow to make it work, and after my server issues, my brain can't recall what that is.

anyway, i found that the chromebook wouldn't switch from AP to AP when i walked up and down our MS hallway. i'm going to do more testing after this week as i haven't turned the chromebook on in a week or so. maybe google updated the chromebook so it works better?? who knows.

[Brian Moskalik]

As someone who hasn't used Google Docs much at all until the past month (and only for document reference), the experience was utterly frustrating as well as disappointing.  I've not had the need to do editing until this most recent time.  So when the time came, and there was no plainly obvious direction given to enable editing, our chromebook was nearly embedded in a cinder-block wall.

My frustrations are likely due to lack of understanding of process for using GoogleDocs.  However, at the time I needed it to work, I didn't have the time to waste.  It has left me disenchanted with the experience.  I'm unlikely to attempt a 2nd round with it.

Neat concept, but poor implementation.  So much for KISS theory.  They've made it a complex process to do what is a given on any other system.  For the same price, I can get a netbook, that just works.