I used a Samsung Chromebook for two weeks -- here's what I learned

Credit: Courtesy of Google

For the past couple of weeks I've been spending a fair amount of time using the Samsung Chromebook. It's the basic model Google has on its website for the miniscule price of just $249. In some ways, it's a great little machine. It's lightweight and extremely portable. I've found myself carrying it around, leaving it on the coffee table or counter and picking it up on a whim.  

It's worth noting that when you use a Chromebook and Chrome OS, the operating system that runs it, you are committing to work almost exclusively (with limited exceptions) in the browser. It's a strange way of working and it takes some getting used to, but many of us spend a good deal of our day in the browser already, so that's not as big a leap as you might think. 

The machine is ideally suited to someone who uses a lot of Google services, which I do, so from that perspective it's a good choice for me. But you can use any cloud-based or browser-based app that works in Chrome. I have to say there are aspects of this diminutive laptop that I've really enjoyed, but the drawbacks were so many, and the hardware so cheap, and I can't see buying one of these as constructed.

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The Hardware

When you sell a device for $249, you have to cut corners and I felt it immediately in the construction of this unit. While it's attractive in design and weighs just 2.4 pounds, I quickly noticed the cheap plastic case that feels like you could snap it in half if you were so inclined -- don't worry, I didn't test it.

The keyboard is also plastic, but it had a decent feel and I could rest both hands comfortably on it and touch type in spite of the overall small size of the Chromebook. One of my pet peeves, however, was the cheap track pad, which required work to make it move the way I wanted. It lacks precision and it is difficult to make it do fine movements. I got scrolling fatigue when I used it for an extended period of time. This is something I noticed when I briefly tested the Chromebook prototype, the CR-48, and it's clear that hasn't improved much with this unit. 

The screen resolution is adequate, although it's not terribly sharp and I got tired looking at it for a long time.

Battery life was around 5 hours, not great, but probably enough to get through a conference or a day of meetings without plugging in. Oddly, even when the Chromebook was closed and at rest, it seemed to suck battery, so if I left it for a day unattended, I would find the battery had burned down even though I wasn't using it.

On the plus side, it includes a generous number of ports, especially for this price:  two USB ports and an HDMI port along with a SD card slot. For storage, you get a 16 GB solid state drive and 100 GB of Google Drive cloud storage.

Overall, though, the hardware was deficient, and it lacked zip even though it was running on my house broadband WiFi. I would sometimes select a tab with a running app and I would see a white screen for a period of time before it finally displayed. I also noticed that it would often refresh open apps like GMail for no apparent reason. 

The Software and Operating System