Chromebook Pixel: Work and School Computing In The Cloud

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Michael Venables.

I’ve been using Chrome OS since the Chromium project was in beta, when I tested out the CR-48 for the Chromebook pilot testing program. This time, I took about two months to completely road test the Chromebook Pixel, Google’s latest hardware for Chrome OS. I tested the ‘cloud laptop’, with the help of my son in two natural computing environments: work and school. For this review, my testing focused on what you can do on the Chromebook Pixel, using apps on Chrome OS to complete everyday computing (and not so everyday development) tasks. During two months of testing, I used the Chromebook Pixel for my writing work, and my son used the unit for his school work.

Hardware Features
The review unit I tested was the version with LTE capability. Out of the gate you have a 64 GB solid state drive. One of the issues pointed to with Chrome OS is that you have no control over your local data, because you are using a “glorified browser,” but this is not the case. Although the whole proposition of Chrome OS points away from local storage, the immediate plus for the user is that you have plenty of local storage for your data: 32 GB and double that on the LTE model…

That’s most likely enough data for a desktop worth of downloads. Yes, there is a “Downloads” folder, and there’s is even a shortcut you can use to access it. The route to system internals is plugging in chrome://chrome-urls/ in the address bar, which will bring up shortcuts for accessing everything from bookmarks to DNS logs or disabling a Java plugin (the Chrome URL shortcuts also work on PCs running the Chrome browser)…

Read more from the source @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelvenables/2013/05/05/how-we-tackled-cloud-computing-with-chromebook-pixel/