Last week I felt a bit like a kid waiting for Christmas. I knew our shipment of Google Chromebooks was on the way, and very soon I would finally get a chance to try one out myself.  “Chrome Day” has now  happened, I have have spent a couple of sessions with a Chromebook.

Out of the box, the Chromebook was dead easy to setup up – no written instructions needed. Simply power up the device, answer a handful of setup questions, connect to wifi and presto. I logged into my Google account and everything was there: bookmarks, docs etc. – easy.  I must admit I was impressed with the ease of this process. I think I was online in less than 5 minutes.

The screen is clear and easy to read. (12″ diameter or roughly 7″ x 10″). Processor speed seems decent, and the battery life is solid so far.

Now that I have tried this ‘unmanaged’ approach, I need to investigate setup this up through the managed interface for comparison. It will be interesting to use a device where literally EVERYTHING is online. My testing will be with an eye to classroom applications and ease of use. Certainly from an IT perspective, the devices offers the browser interface for access to web content and web 2.0 tools for writing, communicating and collaboration with minimal maintenance.  I look forward to learning more about file management in this web only environment.

I will share my learnings and observations in a future post.

Related Resources

Google Chromebook
Samsung
Wikipedia

~Mark