Chromebook: We’re not ready yet

Image from Engadget

It is surprising how many times I go to quickly grab something on the internet, retrieve or send an email and the internet at either work or home decides that it has other ideas.

The Chromebook is basically the Google Chrome browser and nothing else – everything has to run in the browser! This is great for google docs (or Microsoft Office Live), but I don't think that the internet is reliable or fast enough yet. Without an internet connection – you can do NOTHING. Maybe this will change with the NBN. (Even though I don't think the government should be building a wired NBN – wireless / satellite would be much better, and should be provided by private enterprise).

The pricing system of $25 per month for rental (no purchase price), I think is fair and reasonable (if it includes 3G internet reception with it).

There are so many applications that we would want to run that simply do not run in a browser – including many for Maths Teachers. I also dislike writing equations in Google Docs – MathType or the Microsoft Word Equation Editor do a much better job.

So far (Flash aside) I would prefer an iPad or a full-fledged laptop – not a half-and-half! The typical netbook would also be a preferred option, given that there is offline storage.