Chromebook diaries: day four
With just one day left, Nic Healey rethinks a little of yesterday's good vibes about the Chromebook.
Yesterday, I felt like the Chromebook and I had hit our stride. Today, it's a slightly different story.
Yesterday evening, after writing and posting the day three diary, I found myself at an event with no working Wi-Fi and the kind of mobile reception you'd expect to get beyond the black stump.
It's not exactly an environment where the Chromebook thrives, and while I was able to at least take notes (with Google Docs acknowledging me as being in "offline mode"), it was a big reminder of how much of the Chromebook's functions require that magical "cloud".
I'm also now confused over whether I owe the dock an apology or not because the C720 did another of its spontaneous reboots again this morning. I would dearly love to understand what they're all about.
I have also officially given up on trying to configure the VPN. Instead, I'm using a VPN portal our company has set up — basically, it's providing me with a single browser window with VPN access that I can use to log in to the CMS. It's slower than normal, and it's playing havoc with the structure of URLs for image and links, which I'm having to fix up by hand. I'll still be using it to post this story while on a public wireless network, however, just to prove to myself that it can be done.
[Side note: something went seriously hinky the first time I tried to post this, and I lost a chunk of work. What you're reading is my second attempt after having to rewrite some bits and pieces.]
Weirdly, I've realised that I've sort of been cheating this whole week without really meaning to. When I look back over the past week of work, I've produced much less than I normally would, and I've deliberately picked the easier things to do. I've avoided photo galleries and video stories or anything that requires a lot of photo editing or CMS markup work.
I've noticed that the C720 has started to behave a little sluggishly if I have too many windows open. For a little bit this afternoon, YouTube videos looked like stop-motion animation as they stuttered away. It's fine now, but I usually work with a lot of Chrome tabs ticking along at once, and I feel like I'm having to change the way I like to work so as to not overload the Chromebook.
And I really miss Spotify. A lot.