eric135

Acer Chromebook 11

Acer Chromebook 11

We went to Target to get me some shampoo, and spontaneously bought an Acer Chromebook 11. I've been eyeing one for several months, especially after we visited my parents in the Philippines, and I decided I wanted to bring a laptop but I also want to travel as light as possible.

It also seems most of my documents and photos now reside in the cloud. It started a few years ago when I started to use Dropbox, and have now transitioned through three devices – a desktop, a laptop and a notebook—seamlessly thanks to having every file on Dropbox. Then I started using Evernote to manage notes and documents.

Two years ago, when I started my bachelors in nursing, the University required me to start up an Office 365 account, which gave me 5 GB of storage, and I learned you could do all of the Office things over the internet, as opposed to installing programs on your computer. This year, I've been using Google Docs to collaborate with classmates in my masters classes, and now I have storage space in my Google Drive. Plus, most of our movies and shows we get on Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu, and we only purchase movies and shows that we can watch through our Flixster or Vudu accounts.

This made the decision to purchase a Chromebook pretty reasonable. Between all of the online storage services, Office 365, Google Drive, Google Docs and Google Sheets, I'm able to do everything I need to do. The only computer application I can't do on my Chromebook is my video editing with VirtualStudio. But I just looked up video production apps that will run on a Chromebook, and it turns out even that's a possibility. 

Besides the form factor, I like that it has USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports, and a slot for an SD card to expand the admittedly underwhelming storage (but again, almost everything I store is in a cloud somewhere anyway). I don't even mind the TrackPad, as my last Acer Netbook had one. 

I'm also pretty impressed by the video playback. I've been watching Family Affair (yes, from the 60's with Uncle Bill and Mr. French), and I don't mind the picture quality or the sound quality coming over the speakers. It has bluetooth capability, so I can pipe sound through my portable bluetooth speakers if I wanted to. 

Over the weekend, I'll be testing it out on "real life" applications as I write two papers, one collaborative paper using Google Docs, and another paper that I'll use Office 365. I'll also have to try the offline apps, just to see what I could do without an internet connection.

Absolutely amazing what 175 USD will get you these days.  

 

Do I want a new phone? iDunno...

      vs.    

Well, it's that time that our thoughts naturally turn to matters of wireless communication. Whenever there is a "new generation" of hardware, I look at the old stuff and see if there's really any usable difference.

There are times that I will spend the extra money on a new gadget, but I've (finally) gotten to the point where I just don't buy new stuff unless it gives me a measurable improvement. In my particular line of work (waiter airline steward chambermaid registered nurse) I just don't know how much real use a top of the line phone would be, that I don't already get with my old LG phone. I mean, I'm not doing that much wifi internet browsing while holding polite conversation with little old ladies perched on toilet seats, and I rarely need a google map to get to the code cart. And I wonder how well the iPhone would handle being swabbed down every day with this stuff.

The only real possibility that I've considered over the past couple of years is a Blackberry.

But then again, when at work, I'm not going to be able to check my stock charts, and I spend too much time reading and writing email as it is. And all those crevices seem very MRSA friendly.

Nope, it doesn't look like I'll be going for a phone upgrade this year. Neither the iPhone nor Blackberry look like they can take the lifestyle.