Cheap New Laptop

The Chomebooks - a Cheap New Laptop or an expensive Paperweight?

When Google first announced a couple of years ago that the market would soon see a cheap new laptop called a Chromebook, it really was cause for rejoicing. Tech reviewers got prototype black laptops that were really pretty to look and were suitably talked it up. Well, the market finally has access to that promised vision - the first actual production Chromebook by Samsung, called the Series 5 has gone on sale for about $500. So is it any good?

Going by the sales numbers at Amazon, the Chromebook is doing pretty well. The fact that Google and Samsung can sell it at all when the device is essentially in beta really speaks well for kind of acceptance the new concept has in the market. And pushing a new concept is what the Chromebook is all about.

Google has actually been traversing this path for a while; they've been trying to get you off locally-installed office suites, photo storage or anything else and then trying to get you on the cloud three years now with their Google Docs and Picasa services. Now, they want to move your entire computing experience off a regular computer with a traditional operating system and a bunch of programs and move everything entirely to the cloud. With no hard drive and no data stored locally, they expect your machine to be faster and exhibit better battery life. And they expect it to be really cheap and light. Do things really work out as you hope when you actually buy your laptop?

To begin with, for some reason, the new Chromebook from Samsung is neither cheap nor light. For $500, you could actually get a regular full-blown Windows laptop. While this is certainly not a full-blown laptop, it certainly weighs nearly as much as one at 3.5 pounds. If you're looking for a cheap new laptop, this one may not be it. You might not buy one however, for the appeal of the new concept that it works on - everything that you do on this machine gets done on the cloud.

When you turn the laptop on (which, thanks to its solid-state drive, happens in about 8 seconds), Google Chrome is what you see right away. This is a machine that doesn't have a desktop screen. The browser is your entire world. There is nothing behind it or beyond it. The laptop has tried to turn minimalism into some kind of virtue. They've cut out the hard drive, they've cut out the Caps key and all the Function keys on the top you keyboard. They've even taken the trouble to deny you Bluetooth, an actual physical Ethernet port and of course, a DVD drive. You do get a WebCam and a couple of USB jacks, however.

They've also cut out your ability to do anything locally on your machine. To check your e-mail, to listen to any music, to work on a report or anything, you'll always need to be connected to the Internet. Without conductivity, you might as well have a paperweight on your hands.

So basically, the Chromebook is a device that is only useful in places where you have access to the Internet. That leaves out most airplane flights. When you're on land though, does this work out well then? Well, in a hotel, walking along the street or anywhere, Wi-Fi does tend to cost money. If you live in a rural outpost with patchy dial-up Internet, you're out of luck. Every time you wish to see your own pictures or work on a document you been working on, you need the Internet. But even if you were comfortable with this, what does it feel like to buy a laptop that can't install any new programs on really? If you want anything like Microsoft Office, Photoshop, videogames or iTunes, you're out of luck.

The Chrome Marketplace does give you Chrome apps or programs for free; but basically, you have huge compromises you need to make to get anywhere with this cheap new laptop. And one wonders why you would do this.