Considering a Chromebook? Get Something Better

This is a draft in progress.

The old Samsung netbook I'd been using for delivering lectures recently died, and I replaced it with an Asus C200 Chromebook with 4 GB RAM and 32 GB flash. For a week or two, I thought I just had to acclimate. Since then, I've known it was simply a mistake.

The C200 itself is a nice piece of hardware. Chrome OS is a bad idea poorly-implemented.

What I like:

• Long battery life.

What I dislike:

• Storage management is inflexible. I wanted to store a bunch of documents on my machine prior to a long meeting in a room with questionable Wi-Fi. Chrome OS does not support storing files locally in anything resembling a modern file system. Flash is treated as a cache, and does not preserve directory structure.
• In said meeting, I discovered that I was unable to open a number of DOCX files and any RTF files. Some DOCX files opened fine. So, in the middle of the meeting, Chrome was suggesting that I install extensions. Seriously?
• No Java SDK, so I cannot run simple programs from the command line. I need to ssh to a remote server and run them there. This is an extra time step I'd rather not take at the beginning of class each day. And it presupposes network connectivity.
• The provided command line has none of the standard Unix network tools, making another class of examples I often give in class awkward at best.
• There is no good PDF viewer. I want to go full screen and advance a page at a time. Is this so hard or unusual?
• There is no way to modify the screen timeout. Sometimes in the middle of a lecture, the machine will go to sleep. Then, unless one is quick, it may be necessary to log back in to the machine. In the middle of a lecture. There is an app, Keep Awake, that can keep the screen on, but one has to remember to enable it at the beginning of a lecture and disable it at the end. Forgetting to disable Keep Awake can result in a very low battery the next day. Can't they automate this?
• Google loves light characters on gray backgrounds. Very often from an angle or at a short distance, items on the screen are much less readable than they could be.
• No Haskell or Scala, meaning the Chromebook is useless for simple software development. Somehow when I heard it was based on Linux, I didn't investigate further--I was in a hurry.
• The charger runs very hot. This is an Asus C200 issue, though, and not specific to Chrome OS.

My path from here (probably after exams end and post-LamdaConf 2015):

• Blow Chrome OS away and install Linux.
• Problem: if I'd bought a cheap laptop, I'd have a hard drive much bigger than 32 GB to work with.

Common Fate of Android Tablets, or a Quick 2013 Nexus 7 Review

I'm on my third Android tablet. Or fourth, but who's counting?

My first tablet was a Samsung Galaxy 5 bought in September 2012. This was mis-marketed as an MP3 player, which it did fine, but 5" was a great size for a handheld GPS device walking through cities, and fit easily into most pockets. It included an FM receiver, rear and front facing cameras, etc. I liked it. The big drawbacks were that it was too small for most reading or surfing activities, and it didn't have enough RAM to upgrade past Android 2.3.5. In December I managed to find the one place on Charles Ave where there was a drop-off between the sidewalk and the adjacent turf, stepped wrong, and fell, landing on my shoulder and on the Galaxy that had slipped out of my chest pocket. No Gorilla glass on this one.

I replaced it with a Nexus 10, decided that was too big, and replaced that immediately with a 2012 Nexus 7.

The Nexus 7 was overall fine, but the sound quality of the built-in speakers was terrible and produced insufficient volume to listen to podcasts or streaming radio from just a few feet away or with any background noise. The UI was sluggish. Touch a search area, and wait a few seconds before the keyboard appears. Type a key, and wait a few seconds before the character appears on the screen. No built-in FM receiver, but with TuneIn, this is not usually a big deal. Other than the speakers, the largest deficiency was the lack of a rear-facing camera.  Got QR Droid? You won't be using it on this thing. I also found 16 GB to be slightly restrictive, but of course there is AndFTP's sftp feature, and my home desktop runs an sftp server, so moving stuff back-and-forth was a breeze--a great improvement over plugging in the USB cable and hoping Linux decides to recognize the device. Anyhow, I get around 20Mb/s between my Nexus and desktop via 802.11 (and an Ethernet hop). The one time I had two droids downloading from the server concurrently I got 30Mb/s measured at the server. Not bad.

I liked the size of the Nexus 7: fairly easy to hand-carry, and I picked up a small messenger bag that can carry that and a few other things while I wander about listening to podcasts.

Friday I dropped my Nexus 7. Even though it was in a decent M-Edge cover, the screen cracked, and much of the screen no longer behaves as a touch screen. No Gorilla glass on this one, either.

So I picked up a 2013 Nexus 7. I have not had it long, but my initial impression is that Asus did a great job. The sound quality is okay, but importantly it can kick out enough volume to be easily heard from several feet away. The UI is more responsive than the older Nexus 7. The rear-facing camera is a great addition. 32 GB of flash memory is a big improvement over my past 16 GB--I won't have to juggle among movies on the device.

I'll probably write more about the 2013 Nexus 7 later.

Aside: the guy from the Office Depot (la oficina de la marihuana) really, really wanted to sell me a protection plan for the Nexus. He went so far as to tell me I'd probably want to replace the battery in a year or so. Despite my tendency to break things, I never buy protection plans, as they are usually pure profit for the seller.

ASUS CG5275

I recently bought an Asus CG5275 to replace a nonoperative HP Pavilion p6130f which I bought in October. Yet another piece of evidence that HP no longer produces quality electronics. The Asus is a good machine, but uses the new Intel Core i5 with integrated video, and until this week Ubuntu 9.10 didn't support the video, so that was dicey at first. Now that the video works and I've removed the poorly-conceived door covering the front USB ports, I'm happy with it, though the fans hum fairly loudly.

That door: I'm not the only one to remove it. Among other things, there are four USB ports behind the door. The two lower ones are inaccessible with the door in place, and the upper two are very difficult to get long USB sticks in and out of. So my choice was to remove the door or plug in a USB hub. Removing the door doesn't add to my electric bill.

Actually I'm not a fan of the doors in front of the CD/DVD drive and empty bay either, since they hide activity lights. HP does it too, and I think that's the way of the consumer electronics market: style is much more important than functionality.