Chromebooks: Poor PC Imitations Or BluePrint Of Personal Computing?

Chromebooks: Poor PC Imitations Or BluePrint Of Personal Computing?

- Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Google’s

Chrome OS and Chromebook have had an eventful path. Starting as a feeble attempt to recreate a desktop operating system based on a browser, the combination of cheap Chromebooks and an emerging cloud OS were initially plagued with serious problems.

As an early adopter of Chromebooks, I loved the quick startup times, simple sign-in feature and the security of knowing that if anything should happen to the hardware, my entire system of apps, files, and documents would be safely backed up to the cloud. The limitations were evident, too. Without an internet connection, a Chromebook was an oversized plastic coaster with very sparse specs. You couldn’t save files locally or do much without a connection to Google’s cloud, which meant the Chromebook, while more affordable than most laptops, was useless in countries that lacked pervasive access to an internet connection.

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