About a month ago, I was at the local Best Buy and, as usual, I checked out all the latest computers. The new Samsung Chromebook Plus really caught my eye and I decided to give a Chromebook a shot (once again) in real-world business use. I tried a Chromebook once before when Google announced that “select” Chromebooks would be capable of running Android apps. The idea of deploying inexpensive laptops to our salespeople was really exciting since we’ve been mainly tied into the Apple ecosystem with iPads for field sales and Windows for our techs for so many years. I picked up an Asus Chromebook 2-in-1 back when I learned it could run Android apps in beta and I was underwhelmed by the instability and unreliabilty of the Android apps running in emuation on that Chromebook and I opted to return it. I was very dissapointed that it did not work out at that time and decided to wait it out a little longer. Well, let’s just say that is no longer the case. I am totally in love with the new Samsung Chromebook Plus. So much so that I’ve purchased two already and I fully plan to buy more. I’ve had it for over a month and I’ve thrown everything I can at it. With the combination of the available Chrome browser apps and the thousands of Android apps, this little 2-in-1 laptop kicks some serious butt on almost all fronts.
If there is any business out there that can really put technology through its paces in a wide variety of ways, its definitely our company. We need light devices with exceptional battery life and stable, predictable behavior. This is why the iPads have done so well for so long. The iPad Pro fullfilled *most* of the needs for sales activities including PDF viewing, editing and signature capture for contracts. In fact, the iPad still bests every other solution in this regard. The major issues with the iPad really come down to deploying them for the many other tasks we use them for almost daily, like remote desktop access, remote desktop support, and content editing and creation. The lack of mouse support on the iPad Pro is a real bummer in this regard… Its really hard to navigate a remote Windows or Mac desktop when you have to keep reaching up to touch the screen every few seconds. The various keyboards and shortcuts available just don’t address this adequately. I’m a total nerd and had all of the keyboard shortcuts in IOS down right away and it still doesn’t even come close to having mouse cursor support… When you have remote workers, there are many times when you need to access real computers for the “heavy lifting” while outside the office. iPads really get an “F” rating here for not having any kind of traditional mouse support. I sound like I’m really hating on Apple here but I’m not. I’ve been an Apple fanboy for years but come on Apple, these iPad Pro’s are supposed to be for “Pro” users right?
With all of the above said, let’s talk about the exciting new generation of Chromebooks. Wow, they’ve really grown up! The Samsung Chromebook Plus is apparently one of Google’s first “officially” supported Chromebooks with Android app support out of the box. Most other Chromebooks require you to turn on beta builds of the Chrome OS and developer options in order to test out the new Android app functionality. This new Chromebook does not, it is Android app compatible right out of the box. This means you have the Google Play store available from the minute you turn it on and you can take advantage of the many thousands of quality apps that are available on Android. For example, I am typing this post using the Android WordPress app, which is really lightweight and to the point for posting to our blog. Let’s just say, “this changes everything.” I will start to explain some of the many great things about this new generation of Chromebooks and why I think these little inexpensive Google powered laptops are going to create a seismic shift in computing over the next few years in the posts to follow. My iPad Pro has been sitting on a shelf in my office for almost a month now and I’m ready to sell it. Stay tuned!
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