Yesterday. I took the Chromebook Challenge. I was considering buying a Macbook Air at tax time, however I considered my needs and I decided I only needed a computer to surf the web, check my emails and use Xero. So I decided on a HP Chromebook $399.
The computer industry has been promising a low cost computer without a hard-drive for a very long time. With the emergence of cloud and the decline of desktop software it's finally possible for a such a computer to be viable. Thinking about my needs, I need to use social media, track my calories, manage my finances of Xero, track my time in Harvest, write documents and access streaming media. All of these things I can do on a Chromebook.
The experience so far has been amazing. The computer starts in seconds and everything is very fast. Freed from the need to support a heavy operating system. The Intel Celeron processor is more than adequate for doing everything I need. If the same hardware was running windows 8 the computer would barely work.
The computers comes with a 16gb SSD for downloading files. However, Google provides a 100gb Google Drive account for all your storage needs. This computer needs a connection to the internet to be useful. However that's every computer these days. You can prepared Google Docs in offline mode, so it is possible to travel with this computer.
So far the only thing I haven't been able to do is access my works VPN. Unfortunately, that means I can use it for work. Other than send out emails and viewing my calendar. For use in a small business or company a Chromebook could definitely work it would just be a matter of choosing solutions that would work on a Chromebook. If your business is using Xero, Google Apps and other cloud based solutions I would definitely recommend considering a Chromebook. At a fraction of the cost of most Notebooks it could save even a very business thousands of dollars.
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