15 replies to this topic

[ShareShiz]

I have been thinking of getting a Chromebook. But, after seeing that everything is stored on the cloud except for the OS I was wondering what use a Chromebook has while "offline". I am also wondering what use a Chromebook has while online.

Wondering if you can at least play videos while offline and if you can run programs such as xampp. I have tried searching online and haven't found much. So if anyone actually has a Chromebook could you please list the programs you have and if they work offline or just online only. Also wondering if you can access Google Play.

Any info would be appreciated.

[Michael McDevitt]

Everything on the chromebook is basically a web application. You can not install applications as you traditionally would. Basically, you're stuck with whatever is on the machine and whatever you can access from a web browser. You can install ubunutu on the machine, it's called chrubuntu.

Offline features include the Google docs suite and that's about it.

I was one of the Google Specialists that sat inside of a Best Buy until recently, so if you have any other questions I'd be more than glad to answer them.

[ShareShiz]

Hmm so you can install Ubuntu too. Seems like that would be good for offline and online then.

[PGHammer]

ShareShiz, on 06 February 2013 - 22:22, said:

I have been thinking of getting a Chromebook. But, after seeing that everything is stored on the cloud except for the OS I was wondering what use a Chromebook has while "offline". I am also wondering what use a Chromebook has while online.

Wondering if you can at least play videos while offline and if you can run programs such as xampp. I have tried searching online and haven't found much. So if anyone actually has a Chromebook could you please list the programs you have and if they work offline or just online only. Also wondering if you can access Google Play.

Any info would be appreciated.

There are specific apps available for the ChromeOS (same apps work in the current Google Chrome as well) for offline usage; I've been kicking around one of the vanilla builds (in fact, 3664, the current one) in VirtualBox (Windows 8 x64 host). With my Q6600, I've dedicated two CPU cores to the VM along with 1.5 GB of RAM - if you have a newer Intel or AMD quad-core, the same settings should work for you. (The heartburn comes with the lack of a visible mouse pointer in VB, as ChromeOS does NOT support hardware acceleration by design.)

[REM2000]

I have the Samsung Chromebook which i got for £229, it has the Exyons Processor so is the same power as my Note2 Phone.

It's very fast and response and can run a lot of things well, onto your question.

The chromebook can't install any application unless it's from the chrome webstore, these are basically either extensions to Chrome or simply links to the web site.

Offline you can listen to music, watch videos (not sure on the range of videos as ive only tried H264), open PDF, you can create and edit google word documents offline, access and view google spreadhseets (can't edit yet). You can't view presentations offline. You can edit and view tasks and the gmail offline extension sort of works. Apart from that it really doesn't do much more than that.

It's a good machine, it's cheap, battery lasts forever and the screen is a good size. It's light and the keyboard is one of the best, im adding this as really this is a mobile word processor when offline at the moment. Working offline is one of those things it sort of does but you can see that really it's an online only type device. Hopefully Google will work on getting some more functionality offline in the future as it does automatically update itself.

Mine seems to have developed a weird fault in that it will sometimes crash during sleep which is really annoying as when im on the train it needs an online connection to log back in (you don't need this if you have simply put the device to sleep).

[Detection]

I think its fairly similar to Jolicloud which you can play with here

http://www.jolicloud.com/jolios

[+techbeck]

Here is all the info you basically need to know about the Chromebook...

http://www.google.co...-learnmore.html

[PGHammer]

Detection, on 06 February 2013 - 22:31, said:

I think its fairly similar to Jolicloud which you can play with here

http://www.jolicloud.com/jolios

As well they should be - after all, JoliCloud is based on the same germ of an idea that birthed ChromeOS.

Unlike ChromeOS, though, JoliOS/JoliCloud is geared toward Intel/AMD hardware of a more recent sort (one of the admitted targets of JoliOS is Intel/AMD hardware equivalent to the Pentium 4 Northwood CPU series, which is downright sensible - the Original Northwoods are early-2001-era CPUs that originally powered Windows 2000/XP desktops in corporate world, the first update - the Northwood-B - brought the 800 MHz FSB (200 MHz quad-pumped) to general usage, the follow-on Northwood-C brought Hyperthreading technologies to the masses. Both the Northwoods, and their AMD competitors, are still plentiful.).

[+SharpGreen]

PGHammer, on 06 February 2013 - 22:29, said:

as ChromeOS does NOT support hardware acceleration by design.)

It actually does but only on devices with the correct GPU. Which mostly means Intel, or the GPU built in to Samsung's Exynos 5 chip.

ChromeOS's chrome supports all things that regular chrome does...and then some.

Also it sounds to me like you're using one of Hexxeh's builds..which even the vanilla builds come with WAY more HW support than actual vanilla chrome os does.

[ShareShiz]

Detection, on 06 February 2013 - 22:31, said:

I think its fairly similar to Jolicloud which you can play with here

http://www.jolicloud.com/jolios

Nice. I'll be trying out JoliOS.. for now.

[PGHammer]

SharpGreen, on 06 February 2013 - 22:57, said:

It actually does but only on devices with the correct GPU. Which mostly means Intel, or the GPU built in to Samsung's Exynos 5 chip.

ChromeOS's chrome supports all things that regular chrome does...and then some.

Also it sounds to me like you're using one of Hexxeh's builds..which even the vanilla builds come with WAY more HW support than actual vanilla chrome os does.

I'm using Hexxeh's builds for precisely that reason - they are geared more toward commonplace Intel/AMD hardware (which is far from the case with Google's own builds); however, because of the very proprietary nature of the basic ChromeOS, there are items that Hexxeh can't include with his builds (such as support for Adobe Flash) which is a staple of the Chromebook.

[Growled]

What Chomebooks can and can't do

If you need to run Windows programs in a Chromebook:

http://www.ericom.co....asp?url_id=708

[medhunter]

Detection, on 06 February 2013 - 22:31, said:

I think its fairly similar to Jolicloud which you can play with here

http://www.jolicloud.com/jolios

Played with it 18 months ago.it was quite good for light stuff.Very responsive on my 2y. Dell Netbook
After all it is linux and FOSS.I 'd take it for that only

[threetonesun]

The Samsung Chromebook is quite nice for the price, the battery lasts forever and it's well built and a good size.

[alphamale]

i just got a chromebook. it was used. or so he said. i could not tell.

wow! its the low cost C7. perfect in many ways. perfect in that its light and simple. to set it up you just sign into your google account. i live on google services. i got such a deal on it i bought it. i did not need it. for me i use the hound out of drive and my scanner and acrobat. i looked and found hp printers that work well with google print services on the chromebook. so for it ever to be really useful those hp's need to be able to scan with chromebook. how can Drive really be useful without scanning docs into Drive? i am sure thats not lost on google.

now you can use print services to print to pdf and then store in Drive but i create only 5-10% of the stuff in my Drive so thats a important feature but not enough without scanning. they give you 100gigs. so.......

kinda makes me want to buy a Pixel. i will not. i have way to many computers. but it makes me want it.

the way they did the external monitor was smooth..needs more options but very simple. i have never owned a mac but i can see this is similar in its simplicity at least the early ones i used years ago. one flaw is there has to be something wrong with the speakers, they sound so bad. you can use external speakers or headphones but those system speakers need replacement. i am going to have them looked at under warranty. otherwise it's a winner for email, calendar, contacts and web.

dont be afraid of it.