Less than a month ago I wrote a blog post about the first 20 minutes with my Chromebook. I talked about how I really liked the idea of ChromeOS but the execution with the Chromebook wasn’t quite there. Well one month later, I can say it’s not even close.
The biggest problem is the stability. Tabs regularly crash. Sometimes it’s out of memory and sometimes it just crashes for no reason. It’s not like I have 30 tabs open either. I was having constant crashes with 5 or 6. On an OS that doesn’t have windows, 6 tabs is not very many. Flash works ok, but not well enough that I want to spend very much time watching videos or anything with it.
Lots of things that I want to work (Netflix, Silverlight, Skype, etc.) do not. Hopefully those things come soon, but they might not.
The trackpad is really bad. I thought it was okay at first, but after a month, I really don’t like using it. The scrolling is slow. Clicking and dragging is a struggle. It’s missing tons of gestures that I really like on my Macbook Pro. Is writing a trackpad driver really that hard? Is there only one person in the world that has solved that problem and Apple hired them?
I still haven’t gotten to the worst part.
A couple weeks ago, I started noticing a flicker in my screen. Everything would turn blue and speckled. It was rare and a light tap on my screen would fix it. As time went on it was more and more frequent but still tolerable. Then finally, it just sorta stopped working. It will only turn on sometimes (very rarely) and when it does the screen has a red tinge. If I move the laptop at all, it turns off. It doesn’t shut down, it just crashes and powers off. Last time it turned on, all I saw was a message about a corrupt preferences file before it crashed and turned off again.
This really sucks because I was finally going to try out the Verizon 3G service on a road trip next week. I had tried to use it before, but I had a lot of trouble actually activating the Verizon service. It told me it was activated, but it never worked. Then I finally tried activating it again before it worked. This trip was one of the reasons I bought the stupid 3G Chromebook. This was going to be my travel computer. I guess I’m not going to find out if this thing will replace my iPad.
So I called Samsung and they should be fixing my Chromebook. I’ll give it one last try. Maybe I just had some bad luck. It’s not all bad after all. The instant login is awesome. The way multiple accounts work is great. My girlfriend can use it just like it’s her computer. I can use it just like it’s mine. A guest can use guest mode. It’s really great. Unfortunately, it’s just not all the way there. Not even close.
Sorry to hear you Chromebook isn’t working out. I’ve had mine for a few weeks, and it certainly isn’t the best thing in the world, but it’s pretty damn good for the minimal stuff I do on it in Chrome OS. Great for taking notes in classes, but I have the same tab crashing issues. I installed Ubuntu on my Chromebook, and it has become much, much more useful, and is now my primary laptop. We’ll see if that lasts through my next CS classes though. 3G is fantastic. I used it to write a couple articles while I rode from Milwaukee to Chicago, all on the 100MB of data. Hope it works better for you when you get it back!
So did your Chromebook get repaired and was anything wrong or was it just Chrome OS? I’m getting much the same experience with crashing on my Series 5.
From the sound of the previous comment it’s a software issue.
I’ve actually been really lazy about sending it back. I went on vacation right around the time this happened and by the time I got back, they canceled my repair request. So I have yet to send it.
I sent mine back after a couple of days and bit the bullet and bought a MacBook Air. I found the Chromebook experience painful to be brutally honest. Lots of crashes, not enough grunt and wasn’t quite what I expected. Maybe some other day…