Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
I can easily satisfy my computing needs with a Chromebook or Chromebox.
|
Three weeks into my Chromebook journey, I'm still reaching for it as my primary device throughout the day. It's freed me from my study, which is great, particularly in the morning when the angle of the sun has always caused me problems with screen glare in there.
As noted above, my Windows 7 machine has been very smooth and has handled everything I've thrown at it. I bought the Chromebook to act as a secondary machine, and didn't expect to be spending so much time on it by preference.
The one thing that I was really looking forward to was the silence of the Chromebook. My i7 desktop has constant noticeable fan noise, and I'm lucky to live in a very quiet rural environment.
So, what are the things that I find myself returning to the Windows machine for?
- Large scale website updates. I've been handling daily changes to the sites I manage on the Chromebook using ShiftEdit, but for yesterday's major additions I chose to use Expression Web and the power of the PC for the job.
- Ripping CDs, though this is rare now as I'm a long time Napster/Rhapsody user and when I do buy it's more likely to be downloads from Google Play these days.
- Accounting. The various businesses I handle the accounts for use a Windows program. We are already thinking of moving some of these to cloud services, though.
- Outlook, for some email accounts, mainly out of habit. I'll shift these soon.
- TeamViewer sessions into remote computers. That actually works fine on the Chromebook via the web interface, but it's easier with the big screen of my desktop.
- Directing Napster stream to various audio devices around the house using Jamcast. The Chromebook doesn't have a way to act as DLNA controller, let alone stream its audio channel to DLNA receivers.
- At some point I'm going to want to continue the heavy PC games that I've started (Dishonoured and Skyrim)... but I've got addicted to Fallen London on the Chromebook for now.
- MS Access. I have a couple of databases that I use occasionally. To work in the Cloud I'd need to port them to a SQL database on a cloud instance somewhere.
- Zinio. Though I read mostly on my tablet, I do find that the big monitor is better for my music magazine Uncut.
- Calibre.
- Scrivener. Though I've been deliberately trying to use cloud alternatives for the last three weeks, I will want to return to Scrivener when I tackle another novel. Short stories can be handled pretty well in the cloud by Scriptito, or Workflowy for outlining and Google Docs for the draft.
- Skype. I can exchange text messages and voice with Skype users using IMO on the Chromebook, but my family and friends are big Skype video users. I'm trying to push them across to Google Hangouts but I don't think it's going to happen!
Some of the above relate to the size of the screen and could be handled by a Chromebox of sufficent power.
The other big reason why I still have to turn on the Windows PC (though not actually use it) is printing. Neither of our two printers has CloudPrint so I need Chrome running on the PC to allow printing from the Chromebook.
My wife also has a Windows desktop in her study which she rarely uses, as she tends to work from the office or from her laptop, so I'm seriously considering losing my own PC and running hers as a Windows server from her room. I could then have a Chromebox attached to my big monitor, a peaceful study, and remote desktop into her Windows server as required.
Oh, the times they are a-changing.
Graham