Meet the Chromebook

Meet+the+Chromebook

J.P. Matthew, Staff Writer

As a senior at Stamford High, I have used almost every available form of technology in our school. However, the one that sparked my interest the most was the Chromebooks. First, Chromebooks are laptops presented by Google that runs Chrome’s operating system. It offers a lot of products within their industry such as Google docs, which provides templates like Microsoft word to type documents. Google slides is also available, which is basically a replica of Microsoft PowerPoint, but is provided free to those who have a Google account. To go more into depth, Chromebooks are meant for educational purposes, providing public schools and college students a cheap option for a laptop. It provides the basic needs for academics such as Google classroom, which enables students to turn in assignments. It also allows students to conduct classroom discussions all in one place. There is also Google drive which also enables Google users to save important files such as homework, projects, and more.

Chromebooks are pretty easy to use because it’s like using Google Chrome on a regular laptop. Students have the ability to access the web just like they normally would. These laptops are good because their security is really tight, preventing students from downloading viruses to a computer or destroying the software. This makes it easier for the school to keep a clear mind and takes a load off our IT tech. It is also convenient because our school can obtain a lot of these laptops within the budget.

However, there are some problems with these laptops. First, the performance rate is terrible. Going on sites like YouTube can be a hassle because the videos buffer really slow or fail to load at all. Chromebooks also can’t run multiple things at once, including only having 6 tabs open. It suddenly becomes very slow and its speed slows down as time passes. So, although they are cheap, the hardware and operating system is not as good as a regular laptop.  Also, chrome books are limited to one software itself, so it’s hard to download applications to the software all together.

To conclude, Chromebook are useful for classrooms. It is easy to use for the average person and provides basic tools for the everyday student in school. However, the school may need to upgrade soon before these laptops will generate problems all together.