Sunday, June 7, 2015

#SpankAtoZ G is for...

Google Chromebook

My true love.

When my laptop with the 17" screen died on me a couple months ago, I replaced it with a Google Chromebook. Mine is a Samsung, but there are a variety of manufacturers.

I don't get a kickback, but here's info about the one I have on Amazon.  Darn. That price has dropped since I bought mine.

Why do I love the Chromebook? For one thing, it's small and sleek and lightweight. I got the 17" laptop when I was living in a house and the laptop didn't move from place to place very often. The Chromebook easily fits into a (largish) purse and can be used anywhere.

There are Windows notebooks that are similar size and in the same price range, but they do not include a full Word Application and the virus protection is a sample good for 6 months. So, for the same price to start out, I'd be spending another $150 or so on Word and virus protection.

Chromebooks use only Google products, so you can't download Word onto it. Google uses Google Docs (in fact, anyone can use Google Docs if you have a Google account and you don't need a Chromebook for it) and with some trial and error and help from Renee Rose, my Chromebook Guru, I have been able to figure most things out just fine.

I don't know a lot of technical language so I might not be saying this exactly right, but basically there is no need for virus protection on a Chromebook because nothing is store on it, everything is in the cloud. At some point, Google may start charging for cloud storage, or so the conspiracy theorists say. Who knows.

Since I lost a ton of documents in the death of my laptop (and haven't been willing to pay to have them retrieved), Google Docs has additional appeal because the files can be accessed from any computer or device by logging into your Google account.

Now, I don't do anything fancy with my computer. No gaming. No video editing. I use it for too much email, shopping on Amazon, blogging, Facebook and all the other things I'd use a computer for, but without a lot of things that I never used.

Oh, yeah. And I write books on it.


3 comments:

  1. Doesn't use Word? Scandalous! Can you send a Google Doc to a publisher? Upload it on Amazon?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It has a limited version of Word but you cannot download the full version. You can download Google docs as Word docs and send them to others or upload to Amazon as Word docs. Google docs has the same features as Word, just called different things ("suggesting" vs. "track changes" for example).

      Delete

I love getting feedback. Thank you for taking the time to comment!