In the last couple of years, a lot of new technology has made inroads in the Indian market. You will see people flaunting that brand new Ultrabook, wearing a newly launched smartwatch or using the latest iPhone. One technology, however, which holds a lot of promise but is yet to make waves, or any kind of impact really, with Indian consumers is the Google Chromebook.

Despite popular manufacturers such as Samsung and Acer producing Chromebooks for the market, very few people have actually opted for it as a primary mobile computing device in India. Nevertheless, a brand new Chromebook, the Acer C720, just launched here and we have been using it for some time, and wondering why this isn’t more popular yet!

Polishing Chrome

It’s the norm to start a review by talking about the hardware of a product – how it feels, how good it looks – but considering this is a Chromebook, I thought I should give you the nitty-gritty of the fascinating new operating system (OS) first.

In the longest time, the Chrome OS seems to be the only operating system that is radical enough to demand a considerable learning curve. Needless to say, if you have been using the Chrome browser, things will be a lot simpler for you. Unlike any other OS, you can’t start using a Chromebook without an Internet connection. Once you hook up to your Wi-Fi network, you can configure and customise some aspects of the OS while you go through a short set-up process.

What looks like an attempt to bring in some familiarity of a mobile ecosystem, to a notebook, all the apps are lined up at what is the usually the ‘taskbar’ on a Windows system, at the bottom of the screen. It’s uncomplicated in the sense that there are no menus to really explore. What you see on the start screen is what you get.

The OS is designed to also subtly compel you to buy media from Google’s virtual markets, be it movies, books or games.

When it comes to apps such as VLC media player or say a game that you don’t think about before downloading onto your PC. On a Chromebook, that is not how you can download programmes.

Once you start using Chrome you will realise that most popular apps, games and software are yet to be made available for Chrome OS. So, Google Play is pretty much your only window to any kind of app or software you might need.

On the flipside, because everything is downloaded thorugh Google Play there’s no chance of malware or viruses getting into your system.

You can rent most movies from Google Play for about Rs 50, which is a pretty awesome price for legit copies in case you want to host a movie night with your friends. You can spend about Rs 350 to own it forever on your system.

Google, of course, has it own suite of productivity apps pre-installed on the Chromebook. These include a word processor, Powerpoint-style presentation program, spreadsheet creation tool and much more besides. Basically everything you can do on Google Drive on a PC, you can do directly from the Chromebook and save all of it on the cloud. Oh, and yes, once you set up your Chromebook, you get about 100 GB of free space on Google Drive valid for two years from the date of activation.

Existing Chrome users have some added benefits too. For example, when you start using the OS, you have the option of syncing all your bookmarks, passwords, auto-fill forms and much more on the Chromebook.

User Experience

The build quality of the Acer C720 isn’t bad - it’s pretty slim and lightweight. So I actually carried it to office everyday in a sturdy little paper bag. That said, at times, the lid feels a bit unsteady when you are opening it. While the layout of the keyboard is pretty decent, at times the trackpad feels like it’s ‘resisting’ your scroll when you want to scroll up or down a page. Not the most accurate touchpad I’ve used either.

I streamed a bunch of HD videos on the Chromebook and the display renders them quite well. The screen size feels just right for web browsing, as well as reading articles on the web or on a service such as Pocket (formerly Read It Later). The battery life too is pretty decent. After a full charge, the Chromebook gave me almost 5 hours of battery life with quite a bit of browsing and streaming the occasional music video on YouTube.

Given that there’s very little memory on the hard drive in the system, the C720 Chromebook has impressive boot time, about 7 seconds or so.

Dedicated Keys

Considering the fact that the entire concept of the Chromebook is based on connectivity to the Web, the hardware incorporates some exclusive buttons (that you wouldn’t see on traditional laptops) to make the web experience easier. For example, there’s a dedicated refresh button on the keyboard, and one to swap between your app windows and the Chrome browser.

What might strike one as a bit weird is the Acer Chromebook C720 doesn’t have a Caps Lock key. Its place on the keyboard is taken by a ‘Search’ key, which lets you look up not just files and apps that might already be in your Chromebook, but also digs up website links you might have visited or potentially interesting apps with the same/similar names or keywords associated with other apps in Google Play. This kind of integration is pretty awesome to have and can be of immense help in situations where you might have forgotten that brilliant article you read yesterday and missed bookmarking it. You can punch in some keywords and the Search will probably throw up the exact URL address you visited.

A final word

Considering that all the apps on the system run through a browser, the Chromebook is designed for users who are always connected to the web. You can still use the Chromebook without a web connection if you want to use already downloaded apps. But most of the functionalities will be restricted say for example, you can type in a new word document but it’ll sync with Google Drive only when you are connected to the internet.

However, the boot time is also much quicker than any other tradition laptop you might have used. The only thing that I can imagine will keep people from going for this is the lack of 3G compatibility, forcing you to always be within or around a Wi-Fi connected network.

The Chromebook concept feels like a glimpse into the near future where pretty much every device we use is constantly connected to the internet, and where Cloud is as pervasive a technology as a hard drive is now.

For now, the Acer C720 seems like the most pocket-friendly option you have in case you want to jump on the Chromebook bandwagon.

Rs 22,999

Love - Convenient size, good display

Hate - Constant need for Wi-Fi, mediocre trackpad

mahananda.bohidar@thehindu.co.in

comment COMMENT NOW