When I filled out the Pilot Program survey the day it started on December 7th, the last thing I expected was to be chosen. Yet here I am with a Cr-48 on my lap.
Now that it’s here, I feel something of an obligation to do at least an initial impressions post on it. After all, everyone else has (march ye to the Googles to find more), and it doesn’t seem right to accept this free laptop without at least paying for it with some typing and whatnot.
The Arrival
[SinglePic not found]I opened the Fed-Ex box, and found within the now-famous illustrated box, with the explodey drawings on it. I absolutely love the drawing style. It has a distinct Captain Mark sensibility, which I worshiped as a young lad. I especially like the little mouse.
I couldn’t remember at first where I saw the drawings, but I felt my excitement build for reasons I couldn’t quite explain. Something cool lay waiting within… I just knew it. I just couldn’t quite place what it was. Then it hit me, and I immediately went to get my camera.
On the hardware
I’m not going to spent a lot of time because it’s a basic reference that won’t be sold retail, has little in the way of fancy, and because it’s been done a many times before (forget ye not the Googles, my friend). That said, on the off chance that my vote will count for something, I should at least offer a little something by way of critique.
Like
The first thing I noticed, and one of the things that I continue to love is the rubberized chassis. It’s a little tougher to keep pristine, as the surface tends to hold on to blemishes (oils, spilled coffee, dog slobber, etc.), but for me it’s worth it.
I also love the chiclet keyboard. I like the weight. I like the design of the thing. It’s functional. It’s also quiet. I’m also becoming fond of the layout, including the replacement function keys above the top row, and the embedded power button. I can’t say I’ve used the search button that much, except by way of testing it’s functionality, and I miss my dedicated “Home” and “End” keys (though the shortcuts CTRL-Alt-Up and CTRL-Alt-Down respectively, are easy enough to get to after they’re committed to muscle memory).
I love the matte surface display. I’m used to the glossy display of my Alienware Aurora m9700, and I have to say I don’t miss the reflections. At 1280×800, it’s as wide as I need, and provides more vertical space than a lot of smaller laptops today, which stop at 766. That’s just not enough room for me. It’s no 1920×1200, but for a small netbook style laptop, it’s plenty.
The battery life is advertised at about 6 hours with maximum brightness, and 8 hours at minimum. I’ve not pushed it to the limits, but I’ve spent most of my Chromebook time on battery vs. AC power, and have been satisfied. There’s a nice little display in the top right of the UI that gives you battery charge percentage and time remaining. I have no reason to suspect it’s inaccurate.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the quality of speakers. I messed around with Grooveshark a couple nights ago and, while they’d never suffice for long term use, the speakers aren’t horrible for laptop speakers. I haven’t tested my headphones with the Cr-48 yet, but I reckon they’ll work fairly well.
At first, as a whole, the Cr-48 felt (though I hate to use the word) cheap, and more like a toy than a computer. The more I use it, though, the more solid it feels. I understand it’s a little heavier than most netbooks, but as I have zero experience with other netbooks, I can offer no thoughts on the matter.
Not so Much
I’ve never been a fan of touch pads, and as such, don’t have much experience with them. Though I do like the two finger scrolling feature, I find the use of the touch pad, as a whole, less than ideal. I’ve had a hard time getting the two-finger-tap to bring up the context menu, and my cursor tends to jump around a lot. I’m not sure if that’s me just fat-palming it, or some sort of software glitch. However, they win points with the simple and easy differentiation between the touch pad and the surrounding chassis. There’s enough of a difference so that you know where the boundaries are, without it being a distraction otherwise.
As a whole, it’s a little underpowered for the more intensive flash driven web sites. For instance, Bejeweled on Facebook (yes, I’m a fan) is barely playable due to the lag. Other than that, for basic web use, the hardware is more than sufficient.
The final point regarding hardware, and this is very much specific to the Cr-48, is the size of the bezel around the display. I would love to see a laptop with a screen that fills up the lid nearly completely.
On the OS
Chrome OS basically amounts to an RDP session with the Chrome browser set with `alternate shell:s` There’s more to it than that, obviously, but that’s essentially what it is. Anything you can do from within the Chrome browser, you can do in Chrome OS. Most anything you can’t do outside the Chrome browser, you can’t do in Chrome OS. It’s been said that if you’ve worked with Chrome, then you’ve worked with Chrome OS. That’s mostly true.
Like
I like the general simplicity. Being little more than a browser, there’s not much to do except log in (Google accounts only for now) and start working. You can add different apps (or rather, bookmarks) via the a Web Store, and you can adjust a few things under the hood much the same way you do with the Chrome browser through the wrench icon to the right of the Omnibox, but for the most part you log in and get to work (or play, if that’s your preference). The downside is that there’s not much for the power user like myself to configure.
Along with the general simplicity is the fact that it takes about 14 seconds to go from a completely cold state to being out and about, doing whatever it is you want to be doing. The SSD, combined with a distinct lack of extraneous features makes for an extremely fast boot time.
I like the multiple window support (Shortcut: CTRL-N). It desktop parlance, it’s basically launching a new browser instance, which is easily accessible via the “Next Window” button above the “6″ key (SHIFT-Next Window chooses the previous window).
From a security standpoint, they’ve covered their bases fairly well as well. Like the browser, updates are done behind the scenes automatically without any user input. The trade off for never having to worry about out-of-date code is the chance that a faulty update will be released that crashes the OS, or corrupts data in some way. I’ve not had that happen, and haven’t heard of it, either. But it’s certainly possible.
Still talking security, the sandboxing feature keeps different processes isolated (on a per tab basis) from each other and the base linux-based OS, and encryption keeps the data on the SSD safe from potentially prying eyes.
The OS designers gave a nod to the CLI junkies among us with crosh>. The Chrome Shell launches in a new window that’s accessible via the “Next Window” button. It’s pretty basic, and sticks to the overall network-only philosophy by providing very little besides those basic diagnostics and an SSH client. It’s a start, and if Google isn’t lying about the OS constantly improving, we can expect good things there as well.
I’ve mentioned shortcuts. Those and quite a few more are available via the CTRL-ALT-/ shortcut. It brings up an interactive screen that displays all the shortcuts available. There are quite a few, which presents a learning curve, but not an unmanageable one.
Not so Much
The sensitivity of the touch pad sometimes causes the cursor to jump around on the screen, this could be my own lack of experience with such things, but given how often the unexpected jumps happen, I’d like to be able to adjust the sensitivity more. The plus side is that it forces me into a proper typing posture with my hands elevated well above the chassis and touch pad.
The lack of granularity and feedback in the Wi-Fi settings was troublesome at first. I had my wireless security set to WPA2, and found that the Chromebook simply would not connect. I had to drop back to WPA before it would recognize it. However, I spent too long in trial and error before I figured this out.
Tap-to-Click on the touch pad is disabled by default, and as a exceedingly rare user of touch pads, I was held up by the force it takes to actually click the touch pad without tap-to-click being enabled. I’m not sure why tap-to-click was disabled, but I’m sure there was a reason. Plugging in a USB mouse, however, was simple and instantaneous.
Which brings me to another wish… When I have foregone the use of the touch pad and have a mouse plugged in, there is no (obvious) way to adjust the speed or acceleration settings on the mouse. The mouse presents an extremely fast cursor that is somewhat difficult to control. It’s so fast, in fact, that I’ve found myself preferring the touch pad over the mouse, which is something I’ve never done before in all my years working with laptops.
Generally speaking, the downside of simplicity is lack of granularity. As a power user, I’d like to be able to adjust things more to my liking.
- The ability to sort the Apps section on the New Tab default page. As of this release isn’t available.
- The ability to control default click behavior of icons on New Tab default screen. It defaults to the current tab. In lieu of a start menu, or finder menu, or dock, I would like an icon to open by default in a new tab, or even a new window should I so choose. You can force it by shift-clicking an icon, but that’s not the default behavior.
- The ability to move docked panel items (Scratchpad, chat windows, music players, etc.) to the sides or top, rather than being locked to the bottom.
- The ability to attach more than one file at a time to an e’mail.
Though I really do like crosh> the lack of support for public/private key based authentication for the ssh client is, to my mind, a step backwards in security in favor of convenience. I’ve disabled password authentication on my own server (where I ssh to the most, by far), and have been forced to consider the issue of allowing password auth, if I want to connect via my Chromebook. From within my own network, I don’t see a problem with it, but if I’m connected to another, public network (either a coffee shop somewhere, or via the Verizon 3G plan), it could be an issue. My hope is that they allow key based authentication at some point.
Not at All
The single most frustrating thing (if I may be so bold as to allow myself to be frustrated with a free laptop) was the “easy” and “seamless” automatic setup of the Verizon 3G connection plan. It failed, forcing a call to Verizon Customer Service. As we all know, calls to customer service nearly always try one’s patience.
I called Verizon at the customer service number listed on the failed activation screen, (800) 786-8419. The first person didn’t know what I was talking about, and wanted to set something up through my already existing Verizon Account (or rather, my wife’s account, which meant she had to be there). So I called her upstairs, and she spent some time on the phone setting something up. I don’t know what it was, and I’m not convinced the CSR did either. Regardless, it didn’t work, so that person sent me over to an “Accounts” rep, who had trouble finding any information about the advertised connection plans.
I should mention that yours truly made the process a little more time consuming by misreading the MEID number, and inserting an extra “0″ (zero) after the “A”. Totally my bad, and I now have an eye appointment set up for January.
But back to the available advertised connection plans associated with the Googlebook… Seriously, it’s all listed right there on Google’s own Chrome OS site, complete with a data usage calculator to help you choose the right plan for you. That this wasn’t common knowledge to basic Verizon technical support speaks to a distinct lack of coordination between Verizon upper management and the phone jockeys (or, in other words, business-as-usual for any corporation – admittedly, I’m a tad jaded on that issue). It’s likely that as more people sign up, the process will become smoother. Apparently, I was one of the first.
Accounts was unable to complete the order, having determined that it amounted to a pre-paid plan, with Google being the purchaser. To Verizon’s credit, each person I was transferred to was friendlier than the last, and none of them were unfriendly. Accounts transferred me to the pre-paid mobile broadband accounts division to complete the transaction.
She was able to get me set up, but in keeping with the not really simple and certainly not seamless procedure, I had to go out to crosh> and manually activate the modem with the `modem status` and `modem activate` commands (the later of which is fairly long, which is made even longer by having someone explain it to you slowly over the phone. It went something like this:
crosh> modem status
This provides , the dynamic modem path. Then…
crosh> modem activate-manual /org/chromium/ModemManager/Gobi/[number] mdn [device phone #] min [the Verizon phone # to connect to] spc 000000 system_id [System ID #]
In typical *nix fashion (ChromeOS is linux based), there was no feedback, so the command was successful. We chatted for a bit on the phone (at which point I learned that I was one of the first), and after a while, all was well, and I was connected.
A bit less easy and seamless than advertised, but I have confidence that each call like mine will make subsequent calls easier. Wait. No I don’t. Customer service calls will never be easy and seamless.
Generally Speaking
Overall, I’m very happy with my Chromebook. The nits I have, though they may seem legion, are minor. Given Google’s track record with constant improvements, I do have confidence that my wishlist, and many other things besides, will be answered in time. Until then, I’ll keep submitting feedback and enjoying my Chromebook. My wife, however, has taken to referring to it as “my other woman.”
These are just my initial impressions… I’ll have more thoughts later, I’m sure.
