This post was written by Hatchet staff writer Zach Montellaro.
Like many relationships, mine with the Chromebook started off a little awkwardly.
I picked up my loaner Chromebook from a pop-up stand in Kogan Plaza on Monday, and I could have it for the next 48 hours.
I shed my behemoth of an HP laptop, a 6-pounder with a 15.6-inch screen, and for the next two days only used the Acer C720 Chromebook, which runs on Google’s new ChromeOS operating system instead of Windows or Apple’s OSX.
I was ready to dive in, but within 30 seconds, we hit our first snag: the Chromebook wouldn’t connect to campus WiFi.
This was going to be an awkward first date.
In the interest of salvaging our relationship, I brought the laptop back. A Google “ambassador” determined that my particular Chromebook was broken, and I was issued another one, which quickly connected to the Internet.
It may not have been love at first sight for me and Chromebook, but after our rocky first encounter, I’m sold on Google’s latest offering.
With an 11.6-inch screen, the Acer Chromebook that I test-drove weighs in at under 3 pounds. After lugging around my old laptop, this lightweight alternative was a welcome change.
The Chromebook also had an impressive battery life, lasting more than eight hours off a full charge.
The laptop is powerful enough with its Solid State Drive to run the most important websites in a college student’s life: Spotify, YouTube and Netflix (and, yes, Blackboard).
There’s no native app for Spotify on the Chromebook, but the web-based player is easy to navigate and loaded quickly. The app never froze while I was using it, and the on-board laptop speakers will get the job done (Plus, there’s a headphone jack for when you want to listen to music in Gelman Library).
Netflix and YouTube also ran smoothly. Both sites buffered quickly and lagged minimally over the two days I used the laptop.
One of the best features of the ChromeOS is its replacement of Microsoft Office applications. Instead of Word, Powerpoint and Excel, it relies on Google Drive apps like Docs, Slides and Sheets.
Gone are the days of getting burned when your less-reliable laptop crashes the night before your paper is due. Everything you do on these apps is saved to Google’s cloud, which means you can access it from virtually any device.
Your documents also automatically sync and save locally to your Chromebook when you’re online, so when you’re not near WiFi, you can still work on that paper.
But what really captured my heart was the Acer C720’s $199 price point. This is significantly cheaper than tablets like an iPad ($299 for the most inexpensive iPad mini), much more powerful than similarly priced tablets like the Nexus 7 ($229 for a 16GB model) and unparalleled as a laptop.
That’s not to say the Chromebook is a perfect partner. Every relationship requires compromises, and the biggest trade-off you have with a Chromebook is a lack of popular applications.
The Adobe Creative Cloud, with programs like Photoshop or Premiere, is not available on Chromebooks – and nothing in the Google Store appears to compare in terms of power or functionality.
And forget about the video games you purchased on Steam. Don’t expect to play Call of Duty anytime soon.
The greatest sacrifice I made for this relationship was printing: You cannot connect to the WEPA printing system wirelessly or use older printers that rely on a USB cable to connect. Neither is compatible with Chrome’s operating system.
But there is a simple way around this: You can load any documents you want to print on to a flash drive and plug it into one of the printing kiosk on campus.
Those are sacrifices I’m willing to make, especially in exchange for the sense of security I feel knowing all my work is safely stored away on the cloud.
Overall, the lightweight design, seamless web browsing and cheap price point make the Acer C720 a keeper.
Who knows? I might even be ready to meet my Chromebook’s parents soon.
