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Google Chromebook: Samsung Series 5 first impressions

Friday, 24 June 2011

The new Google Chromebook is fine for the casual browser, but it remains a work in progress says Matt Warman.Google has a new plan for computers – the Chromebook is a laptop that will, the company hopes, see users make the internet the centre of their every computing experience. That means the days of installing Windows, Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader and countless other little bits of software could be over.
The Samsung Series 5 is the first Chromebook to launch in Britain, on sale online this week. It boots up in just eight seconds and has a battery life of 10 hours. That, already, is a radical departure.
I’ve used the Chromebook for a few hours – the devices have not been allowed outside Google until yesterday – and my first impressions of the device are broadly positive. It’s very much a work in progress, but this is not so much a game-changing piece of kit as one that’s playing a new game all of its own. Backed by Google, it would be a brave person who bet that it wouldn’t catch on.
The easy criticism to make is that the Chromebook does not work well if it is not connected to the internet, simply because everything works via being online. Of course, even Google Mail is hamstrung without a connection to the web, let alone more advanced programmes for online photo-editing.
The man in charge of Chromebooks at Google, Sundar Pichai, says that this criticism is not one levelled at him by actual users so far. (Google has distributed thousands of pre-production Chromebooks to trusted people.) While it is a weakness that Chromebooks cannot do much offline, in the reported experience of users, there was very little they needed to do that was offline – and the same goes for myself. Coffee shops, railway stations and offices now have Wi-Fi connections, and almost all smartphones can go online. Pichai also says that Chromebooks will be sold online only, at least for this year, so that people who buy them “self-select” and know what they’re getting.The main appeal of a Chromebook, however, is in its simplicity – every time it starts up it checks it is running correctly and Google updates the software automatically. Everything that is irritating about Windows, from pop-ups to virus scans, evaporates.
In use, a Chromebook is almost identical to the Chrome web browser (downloaded more than 150million times). If you know how to browse the web, you can use a Chromebook. It is augmented with “web apps” that often have an offline mode so you can, for instance, read news when you’re not connected. Offline email, calendar and document editing is coming “by September”, says Pichai.
As for the hardware itself, the Samsung device is, on one hand, quite expensive, starting at £349 but on the other is a well put together machine that certainly feels better than an equivalently priced netbook.
Google observes that the iPad’s inability to view websites that use Adobe Flash Player – and many do – has not held back Apple. Pichai suggests that many users are “living on the web” and that less is more when it comes to extra features. He says that he can use a Chromebook as his main machine.
So if Google, Facebook, YouTube and surfing the web are the extent of your online activities, the chances are you could benefit from a Chromebook too. And in time, the number of people who need anything more than the web is only set to fall.

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