What I Don't Like About My Chromebook

Originally written by Harold Shaw and published at One Foot In Reality, © 2011-2012

I have had my Samsung Series 5, 550 Chromebook for two weeks and yes it has become my primary laptop.

However, there are some things that it doesn't do all that well or has quirks with how it "does work" that make me scratch my head or do a little swearing at it when I get frustrated.

If you notice something that I am discussing below and know a solution or have a better way than I currently using, I would welcome your comments, I am very open to learning how to do thing better or easier.

Connecting to an iPhone

This is more an Apple issue than the Chromebook, but I currently use an iPhone and the only thing I can do on my Chromebook 550 with it - is charge it. I use the iPhone as my camera, shoot short videos, do screenshots of my running apps and as a music player, along with a bunch of other things.

Unfortunately, I can’t manage the iPhone directly from my Chromebook (no iTunes) and need to use either my old MacBook or my Wife’s PC, which is inconvenient to say the least. Especially, if I am traveling and only have the Chromebook with me. Until today I had to email photos/videos/screenshots or download them to my Mac and then upload to Google+/Picasa, then download to my Chromebook, so that I can upload to my blog.

Update: I just discovered that you can turn on instant upload in Google+, so that any photos, screenshots or videos that I take with my iPhone are uploaded to my Google+ account automatically, from there I can download them (since WordPress.org doesn't recognize the Google URL to just import them that way) manipulate them into my WordPress.org blog or other places I need them  But it is easy here on Blogger to just insert a photo from Picasa/Google+. 

I just took the below photo with the iPhone and it was pushed automatically to Google+ and was able to quickly insert it into this post and it should also work this way for videos also.

Don’t say the solution is to go out and get an Android phone, I just got my iPhone in October and still have the best part of 2 years left on the contract. So if you are an ardent iPhone proponent or other phone that requires you to download software to manage it and are not willing to deal with the inconvenience of having to deal with work-around like these, this could be a deal breaker for getting the Chromebook.

Who knows if I really like the Chromebook enough - that maybe down the road, I will go out and find a used Android phone that has similar capabilities to my iPhone 4S activate it and sell the iPhone when my contract allows me to. 

Then again, maybe someone at Google or one of the phone manufacturers will read this and love the idea of a blog series on switching over to an Android phone from an iPhone so I can use my smartphone more effectively with my Chromebook and send me a new Android phone. - Dream on Harold :-).

Connecting the Chromebook to the monitor.

It seems that no one locally carries the correct Display++ adapter for me to hook my HPw1907 VGA monitor to my 550 Chromebook. My local Best Buy gave me the wrong cable and didn’t know the correct one.

When I ordered the one in the picture from Amazon, that was labelled Chromebook VGA Connector - it was the wrong cable (was for different model Chromebook).

I have asked if anyone has a link to where I can find the proper cable on Twitter, Google + and the Chromebook-Central Google Group, hoping that the Chromebook community could help and haven’t received any response? It has gotten so that I don’t want to take another chance and order this cable from Amazon until someone who has the correct adapter (that works for the 550) gives me a little more info i.e. a link to where they got their’s.  Anyone have the answer to this one?

I would think that Samsung would have the correct “dongle” for their Series 5 550 Chromebook on sale on their website, but I couldn’t find it - which is a little frustrating. The 550 has been out for over 6 months and I believe that the proper peripherals for it should be easily identifiable and available.

This is actually a pretty small thing, but I use extended dual screens a lot in the past and like how I can be more productive with that setup. Eventually the Chromebook will have this capability and I would like to be able to use it when it comes out. 

The above picture is a little misleading, I am actually running my MacBookPro on the monitor and using the Chromebook to write this post ;-).

Editing in DropBox

I have to use DropBox for my work and there is no “easy” or direct way to save a Google Drive Document to DropBox as a .docx document (which is the required format) and then easily go back to the document to make the edits that I have been asked to do in Google Drive.

No I can’t just simply share the document (which would be ideal), due to their internal systems.

My present system is drafting the document in Google Docs, downloading it to my Chromebook download folder as a .docx document (so I don’t mix it up with my original on gDrive), then uploading to the correct folder in DropBox. If I need to edit, I click on the file, which takes me to a download screen, then I have to re-name and download the document, then upload it to my Drive account and convert it back to a Google Doc, then edit and repeat the process to get it back to DropBox. 

To be honest this system is quite a pain in the ass, is too labor intensive and has too many copies of the same document laying around.

I could use the Skydrive version of Word for editing, but that only eliminates two steps in the process .

There is probably an extension that will help make this process a LOT easier, but I haven’t found it yet.

This is a VERY round-about way of having to do my work, but unless there is an easier way that someone knows out there, it is the way that I have to do things for now, if I want to use my Chromebook for my work - which I do.

Can’t Create a Folder

In the file management system folder, you have two folder choices, Downloads and Google Drive and any storage device you have in that the Chromebook recognizes.

Yes you can make folders inside of those two primary folders, but you cannot create your own folders in the sidebar. 16GB is actually a lot of room and if I want to store particular documents, photos or music in their own folder on my hard drive, that are not synced to the web, that should be my choice.

Even something as simple being able to rename the downloads folder (which you cannot do) with my name and then having a downloads folder in there would be nice.

I guess I want to personalize the Chromebook more, to make it mine, not just another generic computer that I use - I am funny that way. I know that this is a small thing in the usability of the Chromebook, but it is something that I don’t like not being able to do.

Photo Management

When I attempted to upload photo folders from a 32GB SD Card using the Google+ or Picasa uploaders, I couldn’t? It would upload the images inside of the folder, but it would not upload folders. So in order to upload my 2012 folder, I would have to drill down through each month and day folder before I could upload photos to Picasa or Google+ (which is the same thing).

This is a real inconvenience, since I don’t have the storage on the Chromebook to archive those photos on my machine. My solution will probably be to get a new external drive and host my photos on it, but it would be nicer and easier to simply upload them directly to the cloud. This is probably not really a Chromebook problem, but more of a Picasa/Google+ one.

The reality is that

I love my Samsung Series 5 550 Chromebook. For most of the things that I have to do with it, it works flawlessly, but it seems when you have to go outside of Google’s ecosystem or sometimes even outside of Google Drive, things break down a little and don’t work as smoothly.

Changing to the Chromebook for me has been mostly pain-free and just required having a slight mind-set adjustment about how to do things, because I have been moving Cloud and many Google services over the course of the past 5 years. For some PC, Mac or even some Linux users who are more desktop oriented, the mindset change is pretty tough and I can see why they might believe that the Chromebook is not worth the effort - yet.

Most of the things I don’t like about my Chromebook experience are minor and there are work-arounds for all of them (except the damn dongle thing - I have to have the right connector). While they might not be ideal or even quick and easy, but I can do what I want, it just takes longer than it should.

Overall, I can say if I had to do it over again, I would. The Samsung Series 5 550 Chromebook has done more than what I expected it would and I am happy with my decision to buy one so far.

Although I do beg to differ with the Chromebook ads, it isn’t for everyone, but it is for me and that is enough.

Originally written by Harold Shaw or Mary Shaw and published at One Foot In Reality, © 2011-2012 – All Rights Reserved. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Harold Shaw or Mary Shaw and One Foot In Reality with appropriate and specific directions or links to the original content.