Day 1 of my life without a traditional computer went well. For the next 7 days, I will only be using a Chromebook. I did luck out today I found that the Chromebook I am using allows me to install Andriod Apps. How would this make a difference? Well for starters I was able to install Business Skype, Microsoft Word, a Telnet Program, Twitter App and my trusty Evernote. This is a huge leap in the right direction for the Google Team and the Chromebook.
I can tell you that if you don’t have an Office 365 account you will not be able to use the MS Office Apps. It does require you to log into your account. If you don’t have an account you still have access to all of the Google Apps. If you buy a new Chromebook you will also have 100 GIG of online data storage.
I was also shocked to find out that I could connect my DropBox and One Drive cloud storage directly to the file explorer program. Now it really does not matter where your data is stored you can have access to your files.
My partner at work asked me to remote into her desktop computer. I searched the Andriod Apps and found a Microsoft Remote Desktop client. I opened it and logged right into her machine. So yes the Chromebook can be used in a technology environment.
Using Google Cloud print which I set up for our students I was able to install a printer and print just like I normally would from Office. Is there a learning curve? Sure, but overall I had a successful first day with the Chromebook connected to an external monitor.
I will give you more updates on the weekend. I want to post something daily so that I can keep on task with learning how to survive with only the Chromebook.