Spoiler Alert – The Lenovo Chromebook that I have been playing around with is Amazing!

I have experimented with Chromebooks before but I wanted a serious experiment to see its viability for getting the work done. In reality, most of what needs to get done for a lot of users gets done on the web – browsing the web, maintaining websites, SaaS applications such as Workday etc. This is what a lot of us are engaged in. But I wanted to push its limit to see if it can also be suitable for some advanced users. So I decided to only work with it when I come to work in the renovated Clapp Library at the College.

The Chromebook I am experimenting with is Lenovo Chromebook 14e gen 3. I have been a long time Mac user so, to me, I need to be able to do everything I do on a regular basis for work on my Mac on this system. Here are my findings.

Routine usage
As I mentioned, routine things one does on the web works well. I use Chrome and I do have 30-40 tabs open in Chrome that I shuffle back and forth. It has worked fine. I also use tab grouping as a way to organize them easily. Since I use the same account to login to my Chromebook as my primary Chrome Profile, it was a piece of cake. Everything transferred fine and the Chrome experience is identical to my experience with Mac. To be honest, like most of us, we use Chrome the most for work.

Display and Virtual Desktops
The screen dimension of this Chromebook is the same as a Macbook Air. I have used it by itself and though it is a small screen, when needed, I can get my work done just fine. I connect my Chromebook to a large monitor just like I do my Mac laptop and it works well. I am so used to Spaces in my Mac and organize the various apps into spaces. The equivalent in Chromebook is called Desks. So I have organized my various apps to open in different desks. I still have to figure out how to retain in when I restart the Chromebook. I am sure there is a way. Similarly, Mac has a Dock and Chromebook has a Shelf. Since I have rebooted the Chromebook only a few times since I got it some 6 weeks ago, this has not been an inconvenience, but in the long run, I absolutely need to figure out how upon restart I can get it to open the apps in the proper desks.

There are some quirks one needs to learn. For example, certain apps in the shelf open correctly in the desk that I have moved them to. But some don’t. For example, I have a desk called Chats where I move my Google chats. And all subsequent clicks on the chat icon on the shelf opens the correct desk. But others, like Chrome, always opens a new window on the desk that you are in.

Storage
This Chromebook I believe comes with 128 GB of local storage. But, when we are trying very hard to get everyone not to store anything on their local disk, the storage being minimal is a good thing. Often, when I get emails with attachments etc I choose to save them directly to my Google Drive, an option in Gmail. But more often than not, I click on the attachment and it gets saved in Downloads folder. Then I email it to my colleagues etc. In my Chromebook, I have made the downloads folder to be a folder on my Google Drive, so clicking on downloads does not get stored locally. Honestly, the time and effort it takes to transfer the laptop of a departed employee to the next one when there is still useful life left is a big resource hog. By configuring the Chromebook not to save anything locally will solve this issue nicely.

Linux
One of the main things that I love about the Mac is Linux. I use it a lot because of my familiarity with it and one of the primary things I do on my Mac is software development both locally and on other Linux servers. For this, I need things I work mostly with such as php, emacs etc and x windows capabilities. Piece of cake with an excellent Debian Linux shell. I have been able to use it to connect to multiple Linux servers, and open different colored emacs windows and work with them exactly like I do on a Mac. And installing other Debian packages is pretty easy.

Other Apps
Other app that we all commonly use is Zoom. And we have Zoom phone too. There is a Zoom App for Chromebooks that you can download from Google Play and it works well. I should say that there are some quirks such as it logging you out when you close the app etc. which seem to be a different behavior than on a Mac that we need to figure out.

The other important app for us is the ability to use VPN. We are currently on Cisco Any connect VPN but transitioning to OpenVPN. Guess what, both work on the Chromebook. And both are available in Google Play! And can be installed (but see below).

I practically have stopped running Microsoft Office on my Mac and convert everything to Google Apps – Docs, Sheets etc. So, I am not reliant on this, but if need be, we do have Office 365 which can be used.

We all need to be able to open PDF, edit them etc. All these capabilities come built in.  If you do more advanced work with Acrobat and or other Adobe tools, then this will not work for you.Many of our users have switched to using Canva, a browser based app.

Finally, I do have a need to run a couple of Windows based software such as Ccure (our one card management system) and SQL server client. No problem! On a Mac I used the new Windows App to connect to a virtual desktop. And there is a Windows App that is available in the Play Store. Some of our staff still need to mount a Windows based legacy share and though the Chromebooks can mount SMB (version 3 shares) we are having some issues that we are looking into.

Caveats
Consider this to be like an Android Phone. Pretty much any app you can find on Google Play can run on this. However, the logistics of this is a bit complicated because we are a Google Workspace for Education institution. The admin configurations have to go hand in hand with what a user can do on their Chromebook. So, OpenVPN installation was not trivial and we needed admin configuration before it worked. The advantage is all Chromebooks can also be managed centrally, but at a cost. We will be assessing this in terms of cost compared to what we now pay for JAMF or Intune.

Conclusions
Some of us who have been experimenting have been pretty pleased with how this will work and I strongly believe that this can be used instead of a Windows or Mac laptop in several cases on campus at a substantial savings. It will be a cultural change that needs to be managed. There are a lot of steps that we still need to take before doing anything, but this looks interesting/ I have not used my Mac for 6 weeks though I take it with me “just in case”. I will continue with the Chromebook for a few more weeks and then I am ready to turn in my Mac!