The Effective CIO

Life With A Chromebook: Are You Ready? February 28, 2014

The first impression of a Chromebook is wonderful, while day-to-day life is a bit more sobering. In the end, the usability of a Chromebook comes down to each individual user. In this third installment, we’ll look at some factors that will determine if a Chromebook is for you.

Where Do You Keep Your Stuff?

The most important place to check for Chromebook readiness is in the mirror. How do you use computers now? How have you organized your digital life?

Begin with a simple question: where do you keep your stuff? If your files and photos are spread across multiple hard drives and devices, accessing them from a Chromebook is going to be painful. You’ll struggle to find things, wind up copying stuff to multiple places, and generally only increase the entropy in your life.

If your stuff is already in the cloud, you are in good shape. If that cloud happens to be Google, you are golden. Some other cloud (OneDrive, iCloud, Box, whatever) will make things easier but you’ll be doing the file transfer two-step every time you want to open something, edit something, or save something.

Personally, I’m a bit of a hybrid. I long ago began mirroring my locally stored personal files into the cloud, first into SugarSync, then Box, and finally Google Drive. This was not prescience on my part; it was simple compulsion to ensure that things were never lost. My data is stored locally, mirrored in the cloud, and backed up separately by Crashplan. Other people wash their hands a lot; I make backups.

My enterprise data was also stored locally and mirrored in Box and our enterprise OneDrive storage. My personal compulsion spilled into my work world, so that nothing is never lost and I can get to anything at any time from anywhere. All that compulsion paid off when I turned on my Chromebook and had instant access to everything with no extra work on my part.

If you are not already in the cloud, it isn’t hard to get there. Pick a storage vendor (hint: choose Google if you are undecided) and install their sync client on your laptop or PC. Move all of your files into their synced storage. Let the sync run (for days, if necessary). When it completes, you’ll have a cloud copy of your local data, ready to go. This is good advice even if you don’t switch to a Chromebook, but it is crucial to a successful transition to a Chromebook.

What Tools Do You Use?

With your data now floating in the cloud, focus on your tools. What is your office suite of choice?

If you already use (or can live with) Google Docs, you’re finished. Go directly to your Chromebook; do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

If you use Microsoft Office, you’ll have to figure out how to get access to Office in the cloud. Depending on your licensing relationship with Microsoft and the products you own or rent, you may have access to Office Web in either a preview or full editing mode. Figuring that out is no more difficult than understanding a typical Microsoft Office license agreement, so have your army of lawyers get back to you on that.

If you don’t have access to Office Web in some form, you are stuck with QuickOffice from Google. I’ll be honest: if this is your only choice, and you can’t use Google Docs instead, you just aren’t ready for a Chromebook. Stick with what you have until something changes for the better.

Once you resolve your office suite, what about your other tools? Which tools do you currently use that are natively installed on your PC? Can you replace them with a web version? This is very tool-dependent, of course, so you’ll need to take a personal inventory and judge this for yourself. Some tools you can walk away from, others will work well on a Chromebook. If you have showstopper tools that you simply cannot abandon and cannot find web equivalents, you aren’t ready for a Chromebook.

There is one last solution to the missing Office and tools problem: use a remote desktop or some other form of virtual desktop solution. Chromebooks come with Google’s Remote Desktop tool built in, making it easy to connect to legacy hardware for those tools you just can’t live without. This is such an important aspect of a potential Chromebook solution that it warrants a separate post, coming soon.  Suffice to say at this point that you can solve some critical tool issues with a little bit of technological elbow grease.

A Simple Test

Once you work through all these issues, you can perform one last test to make sure you are headed down the right path. One day, turn on your favorite PC or laptop. Grab a cup of coffee while it boots and settles down. When it is finally ready, open a Chrome window. Perform all your daily tasks, big and small, in that window. You can open other Chrome windows, but you cannot open any other tool.  Work this way for at least a week.

If you are alive and sane at the end of the week, you are ready for a Chromebook. Life on a Chromebook will be easier, in fact, except that you won’t have time for that coffee when you turn things on in the morning.

Is Your Enterprise Cloud-Ready?

If you are only interested in a Chromebook as a personal device, your decision should be apparent by now. But if you are looking at Chromebooks as an enterprise solution, you’ll need to make sure that your enterprise is ready for cloud clients as well.

First, ask all of the above questions from the perspective of your enterprise users. Where do they store their files? What sharing and cloud-collaboration tools to you provide? What enterprise cloud storage solution is your company standard? If you license Microsoft products, do you have rights to use web versions of the Office tools?

Turn your attention to your enterprise tools. Are your enterprise tools web-enabled? Can someone process payroll from a browser? What about managing accounts payable? Review each business process and determine if the associated tools can be used from a browser.

Surprisingly, you may be closer than you think from an enterprise perspective. Most enterprise tools and platforms integrated some form of web access years ago. It may be ugly, and different from the legacy fat client, but it may be sufficient for your needs.

Even if all the technology is capable, are your users ready? Only you can judge this, and their ability to make the move is more important than any other indicator of success. This isn’t a decision to be taken lightly and could be a career-limiting choice if made in haste.

Personally, I don’t think most enterprises are ready for a full move to Chromebooks. I do think we all have pockets of adept users who would be willing to serve as test cases. We should take advantage of their skills and enthusiasm to further explore all this stuff and help make our future mass migration a success.  Chromebooks in the enterprise offer compelling financial benefits, but only if the technology actually works for most, if not all, of our typical users.

In the next (and final) part of this series: some practical advice on what works and what doesn’t, day to day, on a Chromebook.

Life With A Chromebook: First Impressions February 21, 2014

Throughout my career as a CIO, I’ve long believed that any and all technology should be thoroughly explored by the IT team before it is ever deployed to (or inflicted upon) our end users. Whenever possible, I like to use new tools myself to really understand what my users will experience.

To that end, I have recently developed an interest in Chromebooks: inexpensive laptops running Google’s Chrome OS that purport to replace traditional laptops with a more elegant, cloud-based alternative. Reviews of the more recent Chromebooks have been very positive, and by some metrics, Chromebooks represented 20 percent of all laptop sales in 2013. With such favorable reviews and market momentum, could Chromebooks become a viable replacement for enterprise laptops and desktops?

There was only one way to find out: try a Chromebook for myself. And so it came to pass that, two weeks ago, I set aside my much-beloved Lenovo X1 laptop and began using an HP Chromebook 14 as my only computing device, day in and day out. Could I successfully remain productive and effective in a traditional enterprise computing environment?

The Hardware

There are a number of very good Chromebooks available from a variety of manufacturers. For my experiment, I chose the HP Chromebook 14 for one simple reason: a 14-inch display. Most other Chromebooks sport an 11-inch screen, but I really need a larger screen to be productive. Even so, the HP 14 is roughly the same size as my Lenovo X1 and weighs right around four pounds. All in all, it is a very manageable, portable device.

Except for the screen, the HP 14 is fairly similar to other Chromebooks: 16 GB of storage, 4 GB of RAM, wifi networking, Bluetooth, three USB ports, an HDMI port, SD card slot, and a webcam. In this configuration, the HP 14 is $349 at Walmart. You read that right: $349. At Walmart.

If you can make do with a smaller display and can live with fewer ports and less RAM, you can get devices from HP, Asus, and others for as little as $199. And therein lies the first compelling feature of a Chromebook from the enterprise perspective: price. These devices are so inexpensive that If it breaks or malfunctions, the cheapest solution is to throw it away and buy a new one. No repairs, no service calls, no spare parts, dying batteries, or screen replacements. Just throw it away and start over.

Don’t let the low price mislead you: the build quality and overall feel of the HP 14 is excellent. The screen is clear and bright, the keyboard and trackpad usable and accurate. Reviews of recently released Chromebooks from other manufacturers tell of similar build quality. I did have problems with the webcam, but I was able to exchange my first unit for a replacement at Walmart without question. Really: walked into Walmart, walked out with a replacement thirty minutes later. After dealing with device repairs at a corporate level for 25 years, it was exhilarating.

The HP 14 does have one unique feature: an LTE cellular radio. The unit comes with a T-Mobile SIM card and 200MB monthly cellular data plan, free for the life of the unit. T-Mobile is happy to sell you a larger data plan, but 200MB each month is perfect for occasional light usage when you are between access points. You’ll never stream Netflix with that data cap, but you can check email on the fly or browse a few web sites during a layover. I initially thought this feature was a bit much, but found it to be useful in a pinch, especially at the price.

The Software

Regardless of manufacturer, all Chromebooks run the same operating system: Chrome OS from Google. Chrome OS provides the foundation to run the Chrome browser atop the Chromebook hardware. Everything you do in a Chromebook, with minor exceptions, actually occurs in Chrome. Even so-called “apps” in Chrome OS run within a Chrome tab or window, and offline versions of certain apps are scripted to provide some functionality without an internet connection.

The simplicity of this cannot be overstated. There are no patches, no managed updates, no viruses, no drivers, no executables, and no software installations. There is one universal version of Chrome OS, and you get the latest version automatically when it is released by Google. My Chromebook updated soon after I first turned it on; the whole process took about thirty seconds.

Google offers an App Store for Chrome OS, with hundreds of apps you can install on your Chromebook. Don’t read a whole lot into that: almost all the apps are simply packaged links to web-based tools that open and run within a Chrome window. A small number of apps have the ability to function without an internet connection (a calculator, for example, or a simple text editor), but most everything you’ll really need for day-to-day productivity occurs in a web-connected Chrome window.

Oddly enough, apps in Chrome OS are much like far more sophisticated versions of apps on the original iPhone. The first iPhone had no apps at all, but clever developers built browser-based tools and games that felt like apps within the iPhone browser. Web development has advanced substantially since the first iPhone, but the fundamental model is the same.

Beyond apps, Chrome OS features a familiar desktop. Once you log in with your Google account credentials, you’ll see a taskbar across the bottom, a status tray over to the right, and a icon on the left that opens a menu with all your available apps. An initial Chrome window invites you to start doing something; clicking the app icons within the app menu opens the appropriate website in an additional tab within Chrome.

First Impressions

So what is really like to start using this thing?

I took my Chromebook out of the box and opened it. It booted in literally 8 seconds and found my local wireless network. I provided the passkey and a few seconds later, was prompted for my Google credentials. A few moments after that, Chrome began syncing my bookmarks and such and I was able to use Chrome just like I do on any other device. Even my Chrome extensions installed and started without intervention on my part.

Emboldened by my first five minutes of success, I began pushing the envelope. I paired a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard, which worked the first time. I added a Logitech wireless mouse by plugging the mini-receiver into a USB port. That also worked the first time. I even plugged in my webcam, which worked the first time.

You may sense pattern here: “worked the first time.” You’ll note that the words “install,” “driver,” “update,” and “reboot” do not appear in the previous paragraph. You plug things in, the Chromebook does what you would expect it to do.

I decided to tempt fate and plugged in my 1080p HD monitor using the HDMI port on the Chromebook. The Chromebook instantly recognized the device and added a second desktop, at full HD resolution, next to the native 1366×768 display. I could move windows between the two desktops, just as you would expect. I closed the Chromebook’s lid and was greeted with a message saying that the Chromebook would stay on, using the monitor as a single HD display. I almost fell off my chair. Getting that to work with my Lenovo X1 took the better part of a day; the Chromebook did exactly what I wanted in 30 seconds without a single click or prompt.

All in all, my first moments with a Chromebook were as good as you could possibly imagine, far exceeding my expectations. But a great first date is one thing; could we settle down and marry for life? As with any relationship, long-term success is based on mutual compatibility, which I’ll explore in more detail in my next post.