Chromebook opens a new category

Just when you thought, notebooks were dead and tablets where the future. Samsung has released the Chromebook, which may appeal to a new category of users. This product was the best sell on Amazon for Christmas.

I have been looking at light mobile devices which I can carry instead of a full fledged laptop, and I haven’t found one so far that meets my requirements. I need something which is light weight and has a good battery life. Essentially looking for something which can do Email and take meeting notes with presentations sometimes. Tried a tablet, but missed a proper keyboard. Besides I also wanted it to run Ubuntu, Thunderbird. Lets see if the Chromebook fit the bill ?

Here is what I liked about it.

• Extremely light weight, 1.1 Kgs or 2.5 pounds
• Dual Core ARM A15 processor (Samsung Exynos 5 Dual) gives better performance than Intel Atom.
• 0.8 inch fan-less design
• HDMI port and HD video playback
• USB 3.0 and USB 2.0
• Dual band WiFi
• SD Card slot
• 6.5 hours battery life, my Intel based laptop gives 2 hours battery life on a 6 cell battery. This one claims 6 hours with a 2 Cell!
• 100 GB space for 2 years on Google Drive.
• Yes you can run Ubuntu, however has some issues.
• Good value for its price of US$250, 3G is for $330.

What I don’t like.

Has only 16GB storage, although you get 100 GB of google drive free

Hope it had a full fledged OS like Ubuntu, which allows you to run more offline applications. This device is designed in such a way thats it’s always connected.

ChrUbuntu: Ubuntu for Chromebook.

[amazon_enhanced asin=”B009LL9VDG” container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /]