Recently, I purchased a Samsung Chromebook as my primary laptop. I feel that many college students out there are intimidated to buy a Chromebook because of its perceived limited capabilities. However, I am writing this blog to dispel those thoughts, with a few caveats of course. A Chromebook is not suitable for every student, but will meet the needs of most. The big scare behind the Chromebook is the lack of a hard drive.
That is right, there is no place internal storage other than 16GB that is provided for app downloads exclusively through the Chrome Store. You cannot save pictures, word documents, or videos to your Chromebook. Also, you cannot download programs such as MS Office or Photoshop to a Chromebook. So, if you are an art major that needs to use Photoshop, the Chromebook is not for you. If you need to download programs that are not available through the Chrome Store, the Chromebook is not for you. If you do not fall into this category, the Chromebook is probably a great option for you.
This is where I will dispel the rumors about the Chromebook not being functional for most college students. First, the price point, only $250 is great and beats almost any other laptop out there. The other Chromebook products are similar in price and functionality. It is extremely light and easy to transport between classes, not weighing your backpack down. To attack the critics that say a laptop is not functional without an internal hard drive, most students need to really think about what they really use their laptops for. Most business students, like myself, only use their laptops to surf the web to do research and type word documents. The Chromebook provides great WI-FI connectivity and allows you to store documents through Google Drive. Google Drive is a cloud based storage system, and with the purchase of a Chromebook, you receive 100GB of storage (compared to the standard 2GB). 100GB is much more storage than 99% of any students will ever use. You have the basic equivalents of MS Office through Google Drive, as well. Google Docs functions as your word processor and does a great job. An added bonus is that all Docs are stored to the drive and saved automatically, so you do not need to worry about losing your work. Also, these Docs can be accessed on any computer that has an internet connection through the Drive. No more flash drives or constantly emailing documents to yourself! So far, I have really enjoyed owning a Chromebook and would not consider buying a laptop that ran on Windows or OSX anytime soon. This machine provides everything that I need and does it well. No gimmicks, just what I need.
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