Lay Techs: Tech for Laypeople

Since Chromebooks came out in 2011, there has been way too many negativity among reviewers particularly among some top tech writers. If things weren't bad enough the Macbook Pro-priced Chromebook Pixel made it an even apparent stock of ridicule. The joke was that nobody will pay any amount for an over rated internet browser with keyboards attached, however good it may look. Those who said they were good, did it very carefully to avoid sounding stupid to everyone else.

If it was any consolation, the Chrome OS managed to rake up top news for the longest time. So I had to know what was this controversial OS all about. After scouring the deepest trenches of the Earth I finally landed myself a test unit.

The Chrome OS, I hear, was a 20% project by a Google staff. I assume he was Jeff Nelson as described in Wikipedia. A 20% project is Google's policy of allowing employees spend 20% of their work time working on personal projects. His idea was to integrate all Google services together and have an OS operate entirely on browsers, or specifically Chrome browser.

This here model is a Samsung Chromebook with 4G, which can only be obtained through Yes, the local telecom company owned by YTL, although the HP Chromebook 11 can be pre-ordered through TechBug.my with a 2-month waiting period. HP also said they will officially sell them some time next year, but without an exact date.

My test drive approach will try to do everything I do everyday using my work laptop, which is a Macbook Air, on this Chromebook. I will not tell you that it has an HDMI port (which the Air doesn't), one USB 2.0 port, one USB 3.0 port, one SD card slot and one SIM card slot (which Yes removed from all their units for very obvious reasons) because every other reviewer already did them.

I will not tell you also that it looks bizarrely similar to the Air, which it does in so many ways as long as it's no closer than 50 yards from you. Opening the lid will show you island-style keypads with a layout that looks pretty similar to the Air, minus the backlit. But with the price you'll happily get an external USB light as replacement.

I think the keypads feel firmer than the Air's, which I like better. The keypads on the Air, and even the Pros, are slushy and flimsy. The trackpad is pretty crappy coming from any laptop. Saying it's not so responsive is an incredible understatement. It jumps and gets stuck so often you're constantly reminded this machine is in no way a quality one. It's like you have to reduce the speed of your action and response to match that of the machine. That being said it's nice that the trackpad setting has an inverted or Australian mode so Macbook users won't have to turn the screen around to navigate through the browsers. I found it weird that the mode is called 'Australian', despite it not being created by Aussies nor do they prefer the inverted mode over normal. Perhaps it's because they're on the other hemisphere from the US. Shame on you, Google. That's a very shallow label.

Software

Comparing with the Air, the Chromebook's boot time is a good second faster. It's not surprising considering it's a far lighter OS than the MacOS. The layout is clean and direct, unlike Windows with 2 different User Interfaces and MacOS with 3.

There are a few crucial hotkeys and, my favourite, the three-finger swipe on trackpad, to scroll through all tabs open on the browser. Two-finger swipe on trackpad also navigates back and forward through browser history, which is awesome.

The windows snap to full screen and what looks like 80 odd percent left and right sides, which doesn't make sense because now I have no idea what to do with the other 20 percent besides placing the calculator.

No Skype yet, although there is a better equivalent, Hangout. But being a Skype user  at work I do feel pretty annoyed to not be able to send-receive files and chat with my boss. Some said IMO Messenger comes with Skype but after checking it out, it doesn't. It does have almost every other IM clients though.

Photo editing can be done with Pixlr Editor, available at the webstore. It tries to mimic Adobe Photoshop and frankly can do pretty much up to 50% of what Photoshop can do. You're expecting a higher percentage? It's a free and browser version so go figure. That said they did a good job by using the same hot keys as Photoshop which can get Photoshop users hitting the ground running, unlike with GIMP.

WeVideo is apparently a pretty serious video editing and movie creation app, but I never gotten around to trying it out. Spotify and Deezer works because they both have browser players. Dropbox is amazing because it's a browser version which doesn't try to sync every god dammed thing with the machine. It's only got 16GB of space. Nothing stays in the machine because nothing can.

It supports only a handful of browser-friendly video/audio formats like MP4 and MOV. Alternative to playing other formats, for example AVI, would be to upload the movie onto Google Drive and playing it using Drive's player. Complete waste of time and bandwith, in my opinion.

There is still no IMAP or POP email client on Chrome OS, so I had to resort to Squirrel Mail which sucks so bad I'd rather go to the post office and the send mails myself. This may sound trivial but I like the feeling when I hit and hold the Backspace button, the alphabets get erased smoothly, compared to how twitchy the Air deals with it.

Air Print is possible, of course with any printer with the air-print ability. Set it up on the Chrome browser on your Windows/Mac machine  and you can then print documents wirelessly from the Chromebook.

To sum up the Chrome OS, this is indeed a web-centric OS. Almost all their apps are just bookmarks to websites laid out along the bottom bar. So as long as there's a browser version to a service you can use it with the Chromebook. That also means you need, need, need and absolutely need 24-hour Internet connection, or nothing can work.

The unit I'm using is perpetually tethered to my phone internet whenever I'm not on Wifi. It's a good idea to take the Yes 4G plan, although many tell me Yes is not a very good telco company. So better to get a Mifi from one of the three giants instead for better connection stability.

I've never tried any other Chromebooks but this Samsung unit seems like a very basic one. I don't like that it tries to pass off as a Macbook Air. I would consider the HP Chromebook 11, although the specs is exactly the same as the Samsung. At least the exterior design is more original. And I like the Google-inspired colors too.

The problem with the overall experience on this machine is greatly limited by the hardware instead of the OS. Twitchy trackpad, jumpy scrolling and slow response. It is at this point when I realised the purpose of the bloody expensive Chromebook Pixel.

A Further Future

This is still a very hardware-intensive era for technology. But when that completely matures, technology will shift towards Virtualization. Not that it's not already being practised one way or another now, with cloud computing and browser gaming. But it will eventually completely take over the world.

According to Moore's Law, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. This means technology will improve exponentially every year from the moment they became the center of civilisation. He also predicted the limitation to the law that based on similar growth methods, which is increasing efficiency by making everything smaller, technology will seize to improve once we get to something as small as the size of an atom. This means we will reach a point when hardware and software advancement will no longer matter because it will completely stagnate. That is when we will look at alternative advancements, ie Virtualization.

The kind of Virtualization I'm talking about is not that of storing stuff over servers instead of local drives. I'm talking about the degree of communication between your machine and servers extend to the extreme where absolutely no CPU and GPU processing will be done locally.

Imagine processing hardware being placed in a remote part of the world, stored with everything from document software, games, Photoshop, AutoCAD and Logic Pro. Consumers use a simple machine that sends and receives commands based on what they see through the screen they have. They can play games, edit photos and videos and create documents using these virtual software.

Consumers will no longer need to buy huge tower PCs and keep upgrading them. All they need is a screen, necessary peripherals and subscriptions. This is the age the Chromebook is built for. And I think computer makers should, instead of making fun of Chromebooks, start worrying.