Google’s Chromebook: A perfect secondary computer?

I bought a Cr-48 on eBay a couple weeks ago. For anyone who doesn’t know what that is, and I imagine that is most of you, it is a particular model of laptop running Google’s Chrome OS, something Google calls a “Chromebook”. There has been an increase in the number of these devices in the past few months with the third generation machines hitting shops this side of Christmas and adverts everywhere for them. I believe they can actually serve some people as decent primary computers and most people as a very good secondary computer. However they definitely can’t be expected to perform all of the functions of a fully-fledged operating system like OS X, Windows or a decent distribution of Linux. They are especially attractive in the US with their $199 price tag. They start a bit more expensive over here at £199. I was lucky enough to pick up this Cr-48 for £100 + postage in good condition. It isn’t as powerful as the new Chromebooks by Samsung or Acer, but it is already turning into a great little computer for the money.

This will be a series of short posts on the device, its OS and seeing how it fairs as a secondary device to my main iMac computer. I’ll give a small background on each area of the laptop: its OS, specs and how it handles the different things I expect my laptop to be able to perform like word processing, video watching, and general usage over the days and weeks. I’ll be able to compare it to the different computers I’ve used including my MacBook, M11X and iMac, although they are obviously vastly different machines.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Originally published on 21 December 2012 at www.dcxiii.com.