For the last couple of month’s I’ve been mostly using my Samsung Google Chromebook for my internet/blogging/multimedia activities. It cost $250.
It’s certainly true that I would rather have a new MacBook Air, but as I have stated before I couldn’t see spending that kind of money right now. Too many other things I want and need to spend money on.
The more I use this little machine, the more comfortable I am with it. True, it is kind of cheaply built, but hell, look at the price. The only thing I’ve found it really doesn’t do that well is video display. I guess the graphics card, or whatever you call the part of this machine that processes video, isn’t super good. But it isn’t horrible either.
I guess there is on other issue that has come up, and that is video editing. While there is some reasonable cloud-based software out there for video editing, the challenge is in the uploading of your video footage into the cloud to work on it. HD video creates such big files. It just isn’t very feasible to upload hundreds of megs (or multiples gigs) unless you have a much faster upload speed than most people. There needs to be some app that will load locally on the Chromebook and process the video locally. Perhaps there already is and I just haven’t found it.
I’ve had good enough luck with this Chromebook that I’m tempted to apply the same “making the most out inexpensive equipment” ethos to the rest of my computing activities. I hardly every use a real “camcorder” for shooting video. Almost all mine is done on a simple point ‘n’ shoot digital camera. I use a GoPro HD Hero sometimes, but overall the point ‘n’ shoot seems to be my favored device.
In a world of skateboarders using expensive and cutting edge cameras, I like the idea of shooting good pics, video, and audio using inexpensive stuff, on an inexpensive computer. While I’ve been thinking very seriously about getting a nice digital SLR, maybe just getting a better point ‘n’ shoot — one that will shoot video in HD — might be a better choice for me.
OK, yes, this is kind of one of those rambling blog posts that no one will want to read. Whatever.
