2019 — The year of the ChromeBook
Its the end of 2018, and I think its time we stop under estimating Google’s ChromeOS, and even Chromebooks as a whole. While I haven’t switched over to a Chromebook as my daily driver yet, I think there should be a real conversation over the next few months, if this is the way we as consumers spend our money. While I tend to stick with more of a pure Linux experience, the fact that many Chromebooks are starting to get Linux support really excites me. As of right now 100% of everything I do runs and can run on Linux. While many people are scared to give up their Microsoft or Adobe suite, which can be a hard switch. Most consumers don’t need that type of premium software to do what they need to do. When Chromebooks first came out they were basically just a browser running on dedicated hardware. But over the last 69 updates or so that have been released to the ChromeOS operating system it has really grown some legs is at a point where I would recommend most people consider buying a Chromebook as their next devices. If you consider how much time you spend in a browser I would say most of us would fall under that 80–100% mark. And the amount you can get done through a browser seems to be growing everyday. Even Microsoft Office has the power to be completely online, and works just as good as the desktop software does.
Besides ChromeOS being a full operating system it has some major advantages over Windows and MacOS that are currently controlling the market. For starters everything you do on your Chromebook is synced to the cloud. If you’ve ever had a computer break on you, then you understand how fantastic it would be to sit down at any Chromebook, log in and within seconds have everything. And you don’t just have to be sitting down at your Chromebook to work. You can have a dedicated ChromeOS station at your house then when you travel you can pull out your ChromeOS laptop and continue doing what you were doing from your desktop. Log into a friends computer while spending the weekend and its like your computer has traveled with you.
ChromeOS also understands how us as consumers likes to get updates. If you been on the internet for any amount of time since Windows 10 has come out or even own a Windows 10 computer you can understand how much of a hasle it is when you have Windows updates. Constant prompts asking you to reboot, or count-down timers letting you know when its going to reboot. With ChromeOS it downloads and install all the updates in the background. You never have to stop what your doing. Then after a reboot (Which is lighting fast by the way) your back up and going with all your updates installed. Zero Hassle.
Recently Google has released a commercial highlighting all the pains, and torment running a normal operating system can be. Updates, Software errors, virus’s/Malware, and the worst are Crashes/Blue Screens. With ChromeOS you really don’t have any of the problems those operating systems have. Its basically a super advanced web browser.
ChromeOS is even starting to populate the business environment. While your company may not be using it or plan on switching over to it anytime soon, I would expect that most business over the next few years will make the switch over to a fully online cloud OS like ChromeOS.(Especially newer companies that don’t have to worry about cycling out existing hardware) It makes since to me why every company should make the switch. Your computer has any problems or isn’t running super great, IT can just swap you entire computer and you can be back up and going. Not having to worry about any specialized software or a tower to be set up for you. And for a business environment every thing is on the cloud even when it comes to managing the computers. All the data is live and up to date. You don’t have to worry about centralized servers to backup, sync, download your data anymore.
While you may not feel like the ChromeOS take over is here yet, which is fine, it will only adapt and grow as fast as people start making the plunge. Like I said when I started writing this post, I don’t even use ChromeOS, but as an outsider looking inwards. The only question I have is why haven’t more people already adopted to this.
