Connecting to an external monitor/TV via HDMI First I tried connecting my Chromebook to a TV from Samsung. Unfortunately, like every PC, it showed only part of the laptop screen and the edges were cut off beyond the TV glass, but Chrome OS has a great feature that Windows 8 lacks: you can shrink and/or shift the picture (both vertically and horizontally).
It took me a while to set it up, but then suddenly there was no more cropping. Then I connected the Chromebook to my 20” HP monitor, and here the situation was worse. When I set the HP as the primary display, I could not get the mouse to part of the right side of the screen. When I close the Chromebook, the mouse points to some spot, but it keeps flickering between the actual point, which is about 50px away from the real point, and the pointer.
That is why it is better to have the Chromebook open, but then I get black bars at the top and bottom, roughly the height of the bottom taskbar. I blame that on the setting I gave it for the TV, which the Chromebook remembers. But the cursor suddenly stops acting up and behaves as it should, which is the main thing. Then, when an external pointing device (for example a mouse) is connected, both the touchpad and the mouse work well. As soon as you lower the Chromebook screen brightness to the minimum, it behaves just as if you had closed the entire Chromebook.
Internet speed
The Chromebook has no RJ45 connector, so to get online you have to rely on WiFi or BT. I tried connecting via BT on a train while sharing my mobile connection, but my Chromebook did not even find the device.
Still, WiFi may work well over short distances, but because of the low voltage of the whole Chromebook (for example, it sometimes cannot even keep up with charging a phone), in places where an ordinary 2-year-old cheap laptop gets about 200-250kB/s (that is, full speed, our connection does not go any faster here) with a normal ping, the Chromebook does noticeably worse, even with the lid open and the display pointed toward the router.
When I go right up to the AP, the situation and speed even out, but if I am a bit farther from the AP, you can tell, so much so that now and then a page does not load. By farther I mean probably over 50%, that is 2 bars out of 4.
But according to friends who have their router on the 2nd floor and often spend time on the ground floor themselves, the Chromebook is the best at picking up signal. The HP laptop has bigger problems there, and surprisingly the newest MacBook Air has the biggest problems. Overall, page loading is slower, but that may be caused by the ARM architecture and the very weak performance.
Internet connection options
Since the Chromebook is a computer built around working on the internet, this is a priority for the developers of Chrome OS. On the Chromebook you can connect to the internet using any Android phone that supports tethering (I tried USB and it worked; I have not tried Bluetooth yet).
Another option is of course WiFi, which handles all the a/b/g/n standards. And as a bonus, if you have a USB Modem, you can now plug it into the Chromebook and surf through it. If the connection is blocked by the PIN of the SIM card, Chrome asks for the PIN. You can also turn the PIN off and then surf always without unnecessary prompts. I was surprised that this mobile data connection offers more network settings (such as DNS, including the option to choose Google‘s DNS servers with one click).
Audio performance
The Chromebook can play quite loud. At the highest volumes, if you have your hand on the Chromebook, you not only hear the resonance but also feel noticeable vibrations coming from inside the laptop. The speakers are stereo, and both of them face downward.
Keyboard
The Chromebook has a very different keyboard from what you have been used to so far. Forget the Caps Lock key. If you want to type, say, a capital Z, you have to use a different trick, which I cannot recall off the top of my head, but I know it exists and that the people at Google thought of this too. Instead of the CapsLock key you will find a key with a magnifying glass, which brings up a menu of apps when pressed. You type the app name and press Enter once the app is at the top.
Or you type a search term and press Enter – a search starts in the default search engine in Chrome. Also, do not look for keys such as Insert, Print Screen, Delete, Home, Page Up, Page Down and End. I used some of these very often, so I was not at all pleased that these keys are missing here. On the other hand, you can replace the same function with a combination of other keys, as the help at 👻 The old sunamo.net URL shortener no longer supports this. says. And there is not a single one of the Fx keys. Instead you have keys whose meaning and pictograms you will find on the same page under the previous link.
Battery life
The Chromebook can last a really long time, even with WiFi or another type of internet connection turned on. My Chromebook most often shows a battery life of 3-5 hours with WiFi on and brightness almost at maximum, but the same Chromebook, when newer, lasts around 9h. This is not marketing talk; I have verified it on another identical Chromebook that some friends own.
Developing for the Chromebook
Since version 23 it has offered a new type of app, the so-called Packaged Apps. These are apps written in HTML + JS. These apps first made themselves more seriously known in version 29, when the Chrome Web Store got a new category, “For Desktop“, which holds exactly these apps.
I do not know whether the current Chrome already has an integrated Dart VM. I think not, but I also think it will happen soon, now that Dart has shed its beta label and reached version 1.0. For now, however, developing these apps is very inconvenient, and on top of that the editor and much of the supporting software is written in slow Java, so there are not many of these apps.
But if Google does not fall asleep and keeps diligently developing its Dart, we could end up with a very capable language that, with a bit of sense on the part of other browsers, could completely take over client-side scripting. I know that in Dart you can also write server-side code, but I have not tried it yet. For now Dart is still in its infancy and many people do not even know it exists.
Chromebook design
I do not know the exact definition of an ultrabook, but if it means small laptops, the Chromebook fits it perfectly. The display is 11.6“. I was afraid I would not be able to see anything on this display at the classic Full HD laptop resolution of 1366×768, but I can see just fine.
People with weaker eyesight might have trouble, though. The Chromebook weighs 1.1 kg, so it is so incredibly light that handling it in any way is a joy. The Chromebook is finished entirely in metallic silver. The front of the lid bears the Samsung name and the typical Chrome logo, and when you open it, there is another Samsung label below the display. The keys are black with white labels, the keyboard is almost silent and typing on it is easy and fast; it just takes a moment to remember the layout and that small Enter key.
You can find a more complete specification of this Chromebook at 👻 The old sunamo.net URL shortener no longer supports this.. I am glad that the Chromebook has an HDMI output as well as a USB 3.0 port; on the other hand, I am not happy that it has only 2 USB ports in total and that it has no fan. It is not even needed here because the Chromebook does not heat up, but I would rather have a fan and more power.
Conclusion
I bought the Chromebook from a gentleman (I went all the way to Brno to get it) for 5000 CZK. I seriously overpaid, given that it is more than a year old, a bit scratched, the battery is not what it used to be and the Google Drive Offer has already been used up.
But I wanted a Chromebook so badly, and here they are not sold officially and certainly will not be for a long time. Still, I am happy with it. Thanks to it, my father can watch hockey on the TV. My sister has borrowed it once for school so far, but because she could not connect to the school WiFi and was not yet very familiar with the OS, it did not go very well.
But she did not write it off and still says about this PC that she likes it. Someday I would like to make a Chrome Packaged app as an IDE for PHP or ASP.NET. For PHP it would be simpler and more people would use it, while for ASP.NET it would be handy for me.