Saturday: Summing up
When all is said and done I found the Chromebook to be annoying and excellent. When it did things right, it was great. It's fast for its size and processor, it's light, it lasts forever and the the screen is a pleasure to use.
But, and this is a big but, there are some fundamentals, like the lack of documentation and that blasted file manager, that really annoy me.
In addition, although it didn't bother me in this go-around, the limited support for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and, once again, the poor documentation, would drive many business users up the wall. Oh, and by the way, Google... What the heck is the Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol/Internet Protocol Security (L2TP/IPSec) VPN doing as an 'experimental' feature in a shipping operating system? I mean, come on, it's a Web-enabled operating system, don't you think a fully-supported VPN is pretty much a necessity? I do.
Looking ahead, though, Google is already working on improving ChromeOS. In a few months time, I'm sure Google will have fixed all these problems. Come that day, I'll be able to recommend a Chromebook to anyone who wants to use a handy workingman's laptop. For now, though, only early adopters should bother with it. It's just not ready for primetime yet.
Read this next: 7 days without social media
Editor's note: This is part of a series of "I'll try it" articles, in which brave volunteers agree to take a 7-day challenge to try something that puts them out of their comfort zone. What you'll read in these pages is a day-by-day accounting of their successes, failures, frustrations, and flashes of insight. If you have a challenge for one of our guinea pigs (ahem, "brave volunteers") or want to take the challenge yourself, let us know in the comments.
Follow Steven on Google+
