OttoBlog
2012/07/05: 17142: Google ChromeBox
Welcome to OttoBlog#17142.
Last month I bought the new Samsung ChromeBox (a NetTop version of the Google ChromeBook).
I took it out of the box, hooked up a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and turned it on. It didn't find a wired network (oops, I forgot to plug in the ethernet cable!) so it asked if I wanted to connect to my WiFi (which it found).
It has a built-in speaker, but I prefer to have it hooked up to amplified speakers.
I think it's only locked up twice. On the bright side: each time, it's only taken 8 seconds to reboot and everything was back with nothing lost when it came back.
I ordered a pair of 28" monitors that will be here tomorrow.
I think there's only two things that I can't do on it (and therefore still keep my Linux box around for):
- RuneScape uses Java, and Google hasn't implemented Java. I kind of hope they do, but I won't hold my breath, since ChromeBook users have been waiting over a year for it.
- One of the three sites I use for internet banking. This is a slight hassle, but wasn't a deal-breaker.
I was surprised by how many things worked on the ChromeBox:
- Audio (MP3) files. Sure, I wish there were more features (like the default player in Windows where you can listed at double speed or 5x speed)
- Of course all the Google sites work (Google mail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Voice, Youtube, Google Finance, etc).
- Weather sites (weather.com, accuweather, wunderground, etc)
- Last.FM streaming audio
- Sites I use to take surveys work just fine.
- The vast majority of financial sites I visit.
- I was worried I would still have to use my Linux box to edit HTML files and FTP them to my web hosting sites, but I found CodeAnywhere in the Google App store. Nothing about it is intuitive and it locks up frequently, but it's the best option I've found (and I should probably review it all by itself in a separate blog entry some day)!
- Twitter and Facebook seem to work fine (thogh I miss having a second browser option so I can easily switch to a secondary Twitter login).
- Trillian.IM works "okay". I stopped using multi-IM clients when Meebo got out of the game, but then I noticed taht Trillian finally implemented a web-based version. There are a ton of things wrong or at least lacking, but that's a subject for another blog!
- KillerSudokuOnline "works" but I miss being able to get rid of the annoying "chat" widget on the right side. I get around that for now by resizing the browser window so that is scrolled off the right side. :-)
- I can still program my DVR remotely.
- IMDB, Wikipedia, Amazon, ebay, etc work just fine.
- LastPass works, but it seems to ask for my master password much more often than it does on my Linux machine (and it doesn't correctly fill in my password for a few sites, including my WiFi router). :-/
- If I log off the system, it takes 1 second to come back the next morning.
- If I power down completely (like to move the system to the basement) it's back up in 7 to 8 seconds.
- A few things still don't work (UPS.com doesn't like my password, Podbean.com shows up as text with no links, so I have to copy and paste links, etc)
- Anything you download shows up on a "download" web page. I had to search high and low to find a way to better organize it (there isn't a "new folder" button, for instance).
Until next time, this has been OttoBlog.
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