The Chromebook Challenge Part 1

A while back, I was talking about portables and tablets with someone. I made a comment that ever since I got an iPad Pro it’s been my go to for pretty much everything. Years ago I had an iPad Pro and stylus, but never got an actual keyboard for it, which made typing difficult. Dictation worked fine, but if I was in a meeting or noisy area I would have to rely on typing on the virtual keyboard. It’s hard for me to touch type with no key feedback (never mind that I no longer have feeling in the fingertips of my left hand.) When I upgraded to an iPad Pro M1, I made sure to get the keyboard case for it. I went with the Apple Smart Keyboard, mainly because it acts as a protective cover and is easy to remove in case I want to write or draw on the iPad. I feel guilty - I have a $1300 MacBook Pro sitting on my desk that hardly gets used anymore. Last time I had to use it for anything was because I had to generate an SSL certificate, and the Blink app on my iPad just could not make that work. But for everything else, there’s iPad Pro.

Add to that a conversation I had with my wife Paula. Her job pretty much requires that she have a separate laptop for entering notes and mileage and other important data. She had to double up on everything - she has a personal phone, a work phone, a personal MacBook Air, and a work MacBook Air. Her nursing service is in the process of migrating to Google Suite for e-mail and cloud. Her work laptop is a MacBook Air I built from scrap parts a few (okay 8) years ago, and it’s starting to show its age. It’s slow, can’t be upgraded, and the battery is dying. The service is going to need to buy her a new ($900!) laptop at some point, and I said since they are going all Google all the time, she could probably get away with a Chromebook. Seriously, they aren’t as bad as they used to be. Some of them are actually quite nice, not to mention a lot cheaper than a MacBook Air. You can get a decent model Chromebook for under $400.

On one hand, you have the old, clunky, boxy, heavy Lenovo N21 that we still use at the school where I work.

Now compare that to the sleek, light, thin, stylish Dell 3100 model that we got in last year. Night and day. I would not use a Lenovo N21 or even an N22 since they a just so clumsy looking and feel cheap, but if you put one of the Dell 3100’s in my hand and said, “Here, use this for a while,” I would not hesitate to at least give it a go. Years ago my wife bought a Dell Netbook, right around the time the first MacBook Air was released. I think it was 2008. The first MacBook Air was nowhere near as small and thin as it is now, but it was still groundbreaking for how small yet useful it was compared to its bigger siblings, the MacBook (big, square, came in white or black) and the MacBook Pro (even bigger than the MacBook and came in a choice of grey or grey.) The running joke was that if you left a MacBook Air in a pile of papers, you could easily lose the thing. People were using inter-office mail envelopes as case covers (and at least two companies even sell case covers reminiscent of that look.) The problem with the Netbook is it was underpowered for what she needed it to do. (Not to mention cheap in all senses of the word - she had to send it out for service due to a failed trackpad less than 6 months after buying it.) It was designed to surf the web and do light work, e-mail, stuff like that. She was trying to create and edit large documents and spreadsheets, and the thing just could not do it. I am not sure what she used for a laptop next, but at one point I handed her a MacBook and said “use this.” She was reluctant at first, but after a month I couldn’t pry it out of her hands. So, I understand the resistance to using a Chromebook: memories of the Netbook come to mind, how she pushed it further than it wanted to go. However, a Chromebook is made to interact with Google Apps, and that’s what she’s going to be doing. I think it’ll make a great little work computer.

So, I decided to take the plunge. Can someone really use one of these things as a daily work system? I did some reading on what would be a good entry-level device that wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg. For all I know I’ll hate it, and it won’t work for me, so keep it on the cheap but get enough power that if the experiment fails I can turn it into a Windowsfx laptop. Enter the Asus CM3 Detachable Chromebook. “In search of incredible.” It works as either a laptop or a tablet. Bang away on the keyboard with built-in trackpad, or remove the keyboard if you just want to draw or write. There is also a case cover built-into it, with a fold out kickstand that will hold it in portrait or landscape mode.

Stylus

As soon as I removed the stylus from the tablet screen and touched the screen with it I got a pop-up message pointing out a button on the toolbar that brings up a menu of options for the stylus. One of them was to take a note so I selected it and was taken to a Web screen that said I can use Google Keep for note taking. Then it said Google Keep is no longer supported but I can install it as a Web app. That took me to a blank screen that did nothing. I closed the webpage and went back to it but this time tapped on “Learn more” and was given details about how the Keep app was discontinued earlier this year but I can still use the website. So I followed the prompts until it upgraded the menu so tapping “Take a note” now takes me to the Keep webpage. It still took another couple of keypresses to get to a spot where the Stylus would actually work. Finally I found an option to add a drawing to my note where I was able to scribble out a few words and then save it as part of the note. Not exactly as intuitive as I thought it might be. Looks like I’ll have to find an actual note taking app, since the built-in app is no longer built-in.

I checked with Nebo, my favorite stylus app on iPad, and found that there was an Android version. Okay so it cost me $12, but it was worth it to be able to sync notes between devices. Just because I am going to try using this as my main device for a week or so doesn’t mean I have to go out there naked, right? Bad enough I am going to have to find replacements for some of my apps.

Okay, I need to break in here a moment and address alerts. If you follow my FB page or blog, you know that I now have an OmniPod. Until the iPhone app is released, I have to control the Pod with a PDM (Personal Diabetes Manager, a device that is basically an Android-based phone without the phone.) When there is an alert, such as when the Pod is done delivering a dose or is about to expire (as is the case right now) it starts chiming at me. Turns out the Chromebook makes the same damn chime sound when it needs to alert me of something, which it is doing a lot of since I am using it for the first time. I’m surrounded by beeping right now and I can’t tell where it’s coming from.

Logging into stuff was simple. Most of my passwords are saved across devices via Chrome, so when I logged into Chrome for the first time it installed all the browser extensions I use such as Grammarly and 1Password. 1Password wanted my secret key, which is a character string consisting of 470 (give or take) letters, numbers, and dashes. I was not going to type all that in, but fortunately I was able to log into Dropbox (Chrome filled in my password) and access the Emergency Kit (a PDF that 1Password creates for you when you sign up for an account.) That’s where I ran into a bit of an issue. It took me a few tries to copy and paste the key. Holding a finger on the text brought up a Copy box, with two blue anchors to drag to the beginning and end of the text area. First I tried with my finger, but I had trouble selecting just the key. It kept trying to select the entire page. Then I tried the stylus, which was more precise but still kept trying to highlight everything. Finally I managed to get just the line I wanted and copy it to the 1Password extension settings. Fortunately I only need to do that once...