Last month, I got an Acer C720 Chromebook as a present. I had been looking to replace my old netbook for a while, and the idea of a Chromebook intrigued me. How well can I get by with a computer that essentially just runs a web browser?
As it turns out, pretty well. I’ve used the Chromebook a lot in the past month, and what really strikes me is how much of my personal daily computer usage occurs (or can occur) within a browser. Essentially the only times I’ve strayed beyond the browser is to use Adobe Creative Suite and to write code. Granted, those are not insignificant needs, and there is no Chrome app that can really take the place of those applications. Still, I would say about 85 to 90 percent of my computing activity is done from within a browser. It’s just that the other 10 percent is pretty important to my personal and professional work, and thus the Chromebook cannot eliminate the need for a second computer that runs a “real” operating system. Then again, I’m not looking for the Chromebook to do that.
What I particularly like about the Chromebook is the super-quick bootup. I don’t even have to hit a power button. Just flip the laptop open and it starts booting, and the startup process takes maybe 10 seconds, if that. This fast startup has played a key role in helping the Chromebook carve out a spot between my phone and my desktop. There are many tasks that I can accomplish much more easily on a computer than on a phone, such as writing an e-mail that’s more than a sentence or captioning multiple images on Facebook. On the other hand, while it’s much quicker to get up and going with the phone, it requires more effort to perform the actual task. The Chromebook gives me a happy medium between quick startup and a more convenient interface for doing extensive work.
I’ve noticed only two legitimate drawbacks to my Chromebook thus far. First, the model I have lacks an ethernet port. This thing is wifi only, which is not a problem if you can always count on a reliable wifi signal. In certain corners of my house, however, the wifi signal is pretty weak, so there have been times when I’ve had to move to a different spot. Since just about everything on a Chromebook happens in the browser, not having an Internet connection takes away a lot of the functionality.
This shortcoming can be partly addressed through offline apps, which can run without an Internet connection. The most important one of these is the offline mode for Google Drive, which allows you to create documents, presentations, drawings, or spreadsheets without being connected to the Internet. To use this mode, though, you must first set up Google Drive for offline access. When I did it, the setup process didn’t seem very clear. After turning on the offline mode, I kept getting “can’t connect” error messages when trying to access Drive without an Internet connection. It wasn’t until a day or two later that it started working when I tried again. My guess is it needed that time to sync all the files, and only then was I able to use the Drive apps in offline mode. Whatever the reason, it is now working fine.
Second, to make the device as compact as possible, Acer removed some keys that we’ve all grown accustomed to, such as the caps lock and the delete key. Those functions are still available, but you need to hit a two-key combination before you can activate all caps or use the backspace key as the delete key. Once you get going, these tend to be relatively minor annoyances, but I just can’t quite get used to not having a caps lock.
All in all, though, I’d give the C720, as well as the idea of running a computer solely in a web browser, a solid rating. It’s no panacea for all your computing needs, but for my use case, it handles enough of my needs well enough to merit a spot in my collection of devices.
(This is usually the part of the tech review where the reviewer tells the audience that the review they just read was created with the device reviewed as proof of its usefulness as a productivity tool. Unlike the reviews for most phones and tablets, though, it was actually easy to create this review with the Chromebook.)
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