Pages with tag Chromebook

Acer Chromebook Tab 10, First Chrome OS Tablet The first Chromebook Tablet computer has arrived from Acer. It is a 9.7 inch tablet that weighs just 1.21 lbs. It is geared for the education market, and some of the specs (5 megapixel rear camera) are not top end. It does include the Google Play store for easy access to Android applications. It comes standard with a Wacom EMR stylus for drawing on the screen or taking notes.
Can I use a Chromebook with ATT DSL? Or other WiFi router to the Internet? Chromebooks are popular inexpensive computers that are wonderful to use around the house for light-weight web surfing and e-mail and writing. Chromebooks connect to WiFi and sometimes to Ethernet. They can connect to any LAN supporting either. If that LAN has a gateway to the Internet, they can easily use that gateway and provide access to the general Internet.
Chrome will become a new application distribution platform for any operating system - over time What if a browser-based application can act in a desktop computer the same way as any regular application? Typically, browser based applications stay within the browser, and are launched inside the browser, while regular applications are launched through the regular desktop menubar or file system browser. Typically these worlds don't meet, but what if they did?
Crostini is here, allowing Linux apps on Chromebooks, should supplant Crouton A few months ago enticing news surfaced of Crostini which would hugely simplify running Linux on a Chromebook. It is starting to be available now, and with the right ChromeOS device you can run Android and Linux applications side-by-side with the familiar web browser environment of ChromeOS.
Crostini supports running Linux apps on Chromebooks, should supplant Crouton Chromebooks are built on Linux, but does not allow access to the command line -- for security reasons. Therefore it's attractive to access the command-line, and Crouton has existed for years allowing us to install a Linux version on a Chromebook. Crouton requires the Chromebook to be put into Developer mode. Crostini is different as it is leveraging virtual machine and/or container technology Google is building into ChromeOS.
Google starting Androidization of ChromeOS with v70 release due mid-October ChromeOS 70 is due in mid-October, and this video demonstrates many new features that are directly related to Android P. Remember that ChromeOS is in a transition period with incorporating Android Application support, Linux support, and tablet computers. The video says there is indications a new ChromeOS tablet is on its way, and should be announced in early October.
HP Chromebook x2, worlds first detachable screen Chromebook tablet/notebook A tablet-like computer running both ChromeOS and Android, with a detachable keyboard, has exciting potential. The keyboard is there if/when required, and it operates as a tablet (with pen) when/if required. Potentially it's the best of both worlds, offering keyboard, touch, and pen input, to applications running in either browser or Android applications. The pen is only available for selected models. As a tablet, it is an ultra-thin device (8.2mm) weighing a diminuitive 1.62 lbs. Attaching the keyboard makes it 15mm, and increases weight to 3.14 lbs. It sports a 7th generation Core processor, up to 8GB memory, up to 32GB SSD storage, and has an MicroSD slot for up to 256GB external storage. It has two USB type C ports for charging and data transfer. Price starts at US $599, with availability starting in June 2018 through the HP online store and Best Buy.
How to know when ChromeOS support is ending on your ChromeBook Chromebooks are so perfect at what they do - light weight computing that just works. We bought our Acer C720's a few years ago and then haven't thought a bit about whether Google would keep support going, meaning continuing to patch and update the software. Turns out that Google's promise is approximately 6 years of support updates for each ChromeBook model. That timeline is not from the date you purchased your device, but from the date the specific model was launched.
Installing Android on (almost) any Chromebook Android has come to ChromeOS devices, which is supposedly great if your device is one of the few for which Android is supported. What if your Chromebook or Chromebox does not support Android? This video shows a method for installing the Android Play Store on those devices which will eventually be allowed to run Android apps. It involves putting the device into Developer Mode and running the Canary builds, so this is not for the faint of heart. After some other low-level tweekery, you have the Android Play Store.
Installing Skype, photo/video editing, word processors, and more on a Chromebook Chromebooks offer respite from antivirus software hassles, system maintenance hassles, and more. The idea is that with the Chrome web browser as the only user interface, people can compute in safety. But what about the whole slew of existing software that runs outside web browsers - Skype being just one example. What about video or audio editing? What about traditional word processors or spreadsheet applications? None of those run inside a web browser. Yet. For a long period of time the only way to install Skype involved installing Crouton, the add-on supporting Linux software as described below. Since this was originally posted in Feb 2014, Microsoft released an official Skype for Chromebooks. However, Crouton is still useful because of the need for other software such as Gimp, for image manipulation.
Lenovo Flex 11 / Yoga N23 Chromebook Unboxing The Lenovo Flex 11 is a new 11 inch-screen Chromebook with 4GB memory, 32GB storage. It has both USB-C and USB3, plus a full size HDMI output. The trackpad on the review unit has a little bit of travel before the click occurs. It has a Mediatek ARM processor, and gives a 9990 Octane score. Because the screen has fewer pixels than some other devices with the same processor, it's believed the Lenovo Flex 11 will perform better than the Acer R11. The price range is $230-270 and is a good value for that price, and should be very good around the home. Because it also has Lenovo Yoga branding, it has the hinges required for the screen to fold back allowing this device to act as a tablet computer.
Looking at Linux Mint 19 from a Windows user perspective Since Linux Mint is designed as an easy-to-use Ubuntu, it may be the OS of choice for those escaping from Windows. This video attempts to examine Linux Mint from that perspective. While he gives a good overview of installing Linux Mint, and giving it some basic configuration, it does not live up to the promise. He shows a very important configuration step, making sure to install Microsoft Core Fonts so that files imported from Windows behave as expected. Something he does not do is take an inventory of likely Windows applications and demonstrate the equivalents on Linux. For example someone who prefers Wordpad will have lots of RTF files, and might be disappointed by Libre Office. And Gimp is not exactly a user friendly image manipulation program, so where is the equivalent for that purpose?
Mounting Dropbox, SFTP and other remote filesystems on ChromeOS

A crazy limitation of Chromebooks has been the inability to access remote file systems (other than Google Drive). While Google Drive is a fine cloud oriented file system, and works great with Google Docs, I need to access files on my Drobo (with SMB/CIFS protocol), or various remote services like Dropbox or an SFTP connection to webservers. My needs may be a little more complex than most because of the web development work I do. Anyone contemplating adopting a Chromebook in a business would have to be nervous about handing company documents or other files over to Google for safekeeping. Hence, there's a serious need for Chromebooks to access remote file systems other than Google Drive.
Ra - not just the Sun God, but a mighty fine programmers editor for Chrome for editing local files I like my Chromebook (an Acer C720) because it's lightweight, slim, the battery lasts forever, and the performance is great. It's a wonderful machine on which to browse the web, run Gmail, Google Docs, etc. But there are several things I do frequently that is keeping me using my Mac desktop computer. The potential for freedom using the Chromebook is beckoning, but these use cases keep me chained to the Mac.
Revisiting software development on Chromebooks - rapidly improving state of Chrome apps for developers Chromebooks make surprisingly great laptops for software developers. If you don't know much about the Chromebook model, you might dismiss it as just a web-browser with delusions of grandeur. I'm a long-time software developer, writing code for a living since the mid-80's primarily on Unix/Linux/MacOSX systems, and I've pretty much abandoned my MacBookPro in favor of a Chromebook. The Chromebook is much faster than the MacBook (primarily due to the SSD drive), and lots lots lots cheaper to buy/own than any MacBook or MacBookPro. Yes the Chromebook doesn't have native code apps, but there is a growing list of Chrome apps available and if you're desparate enough for native app support you can always jailbreak the thing and install Linux and access the open source native apps. The result is a system with a top-of-the-line modern web browser (Chrome), with a hugely great security story, many very interesting Chrome apps, and the possibility to install Linux.
Successfully mounting Drobo shares from a Chromebook with Crouton w/ Ubuntu 14.04 installed The last couple weeks I've switched my working environment from a MacBook Pro to a Chromebook that has Ubuntu installed under Crouton. A lot of my work is developing Node.js software, and writing website content, and my habits are to live at the command line typing commands. But it also means accessing the large amount of content I have stashed on the MacBook Pro, and a Drobo 5N. MacOSX can easily mount shares on the Drobo, letting me access those files as if they were on the local machine. By default Chromebooks cannot do this, meaning the Chrome browser side of my Chromebook cannot (at this time) access anything stored on the Drobo. Because Ubuntu is installed (via Crouton), that side of the Chromebook theoretically can mount shares on the Drobo, but I ran into problems trying to directly mount the SMB share using Ubuntu 14.04 tools. Fortunately I've developed an alternate method that's nearly as good and quite easy to implement.
Tame having dozens of open browser tabs in Chrome with the Great Suspender I'm now primarily using a Chromebook for all my work - which includes software development on Linux, thanks to having installed Crouton. Since the Chromebook has only 4GB of main memory, things are a little constrained. I'm accustomed to running dozens of open tabs and on the Chromebook what happens is tabs are killed off when memory runs low, and if you revisit the tab it might cause a complete reload. That'd been bugging me until I found a new tool that completely tames open browser tabs.
Why do we need Skype et al on Chromebook - should Google do everything for us? Yesterday we wrote how to install Skype and other desktop software on ChromeOS devices, using Crouton. Today we ponder 'Why?'. Google intends the ChromeOS environment to provide a huge portion of our needs, but we went to a lot of trouble to install Crouton. Are we nuts? No, there are valid ideas going on here.