Chromebook

[al_yrpal]

Ted, the short answer is yes. The Chromebook is a laptop though. I refer you to my post at the start of page 3. If you do those things and have a decent internet connection you will be fine.

I use cycle.travel to plan routes on my Chromebook and Osmand which runs on my Android phone to follow them. So mapping is fine too.

Some people like to take laptops on tour, personally I think they are too bulky and vulnerable. I am happy with just a phone. Without a decent phone signal or an internet connection all devices loose some functionality.

Al

[Psamathe]

If you need more than 16GB there are Chromebooks with 32GB and then theres the SD card slot, or the USB slot and that can be what 128GB? How many of those can you carry if you must lug all your data around with you?

But no internet is a bummer whatever device you have.

Al

Al i am still very thick when it comes to mapping gpx files etc so my question is given our desk top pc is on XP and we need to replace it can I replace it with a Chromebook without losing any of the facilities of a desktop pc Ted

I think you will find the range of software applications that will run on a Chromebook is far more limited than you can run on a Windows based PC (particularly without an internet connection and even with one, dependent on link speed).

How much that will affect you will depend very much on exctly what you do on your Windows based PC.

Ian

[hondated]

Thanks Al and Ian.

[al_yrpal]

I would be interested to hear what applications you cant find on a Chromebook?

Although I am not running any Windows software at all I havent found a single thing I cant do yet. Admitedly tbe programs I use arent identical to Windows programs they work fine and do all I need. Basecamp isnt available, but then I dont use Garmins to navigate. Osmand and cycle.travel run fine in Chrome and work well.
If you use your PC to play games you may be disappointed. I dont, so I am not. If you have loads of spreadsheet macros they would have to be rewritten in Scripts which are quite powerful. But the Google Docs and Sheets are fine for non experts

Changing operating systems is a big step but when it offers incredibly inexpensive hassle free mobility and excellent synchronisation between laptop phone and tablet its worth considering for the vast majority who only do pretty basic things with these devices.

Al

[jacksonz]

Skype???

[al_yrpal]

Skype???

Yes, you can use Skype and MS Outlook. But to what extent I am not sure. In the world of Google we use Hangouts which does what Skype does and more I am told, and its free.

http://www.omgchrome.com/skype-for-web- ... romebooks/

Al

[gloomyandy]

Is there a good photo viewer/sorter that works with RAW images? One of my main uses of PC based lightroom is to download (sometimes hundreds of) RAW images from my camera and then to quickly sort through them and select the ones I want to upload to my public photo storage. Lightroom is very good for this, you can use the rating feature or simply mark photos as a "pick" then you can select all images with a rating above, or select all picks and then convert them to .jpg for upload. I had a quick look at the Polarr app and that does a great job of editing adjusting RAW images but as far as I can tell does not seem to have the selecting/sorting/exporting feature of Lightroom.

[al_yrpal]

Andy, I had a look and there isnt currently anything like that. That said I think Polarr is about 3Mb of code. Polarr has only been around for a year, perhaps they intend adding something at some stage. Its now available for ios, Windows and Android too.

I have heard rumours that Android Apps will all run on Chromebooks at some point which will vastly increase the amount of programs available.

Al

[barrym]

Check out the Chromebook Pixel C. It's android, a tablet AND has a detachable keyboard.

[Psamathe]

I would be interested to hear what applications you cant find on a Chromebook? ...

Starry Night, DSS, Registax, Lightroom, Astroplanner, MS Word, MS Excel,, etc. FireFox, etc. Basically a Chromebook is a "thin client". It runs a browser. I would suspect from it's architecture that you would not even be able to download offline mapping (though that thought is based on the nature on the architecture and Google's attitude to offline mapping - which might have changed since I last checked)

Sometimes you need more that "something that opens that type of file". At one time I switched from MS Excel to OpenOffice part way through an assessed project (on my Distance Learning degree course) and ploughed on until just before submission I noticed all the graphs had one axis the wrong way round. After some panic I found that whilst OpenOffice will open Excel spreadsheets it is not 100% and did not support the Excel "Invert Axis" setting and instead of warning just ignored it!!

If you are used to existing software, have "investment" in that software (e.g. in time, documents, data, purchase) then whilst there might be other stuff that does something similar it is not always what you want.

Recently I thought rather than pay out to update my very old MS Office I could switch to Apple Pages, Numbers, etc. which I had for free. After all, they open MS Office documents ... except the formatting you get is "not good", not even acceptable. MS put vast amounts of effort into making the MS Office for Windows and MS Office for Mac to display/print/handle documents exactly the same. Other "will open those files" developers don't.

As said by one Chromebook enthusiast:
I confess that Chromebook isn’t “for everyone”, as Google’s marketing tagline claims. But the list of people least likely to be satisfied is a short one and shrinks with each new Chrome OS update:

Demanding gamers
Software developers
Heavy video producers
Professional photographers
Desktop software-dependent software users
Anyone who can’t maintain a persistent net connection

Ian

[al_yrpal]

I was wondering about applications not specific named programs, obviously many specific programs wont work unless they run in Chrome. Google maps and Osmand run in Chrome. A laptop will be used at the planning stage not in a car or on a bike. Both Google Maps and Osmand can be downloaded onto tablets and phones which are more suitable for navigation.

I would agree that if you have shelled out £'s you might be reluctant to dump your existing software. When I retired from running a small IT company years ago I cleaned up my machine and took all licenced software off replacing it with free stuff except getting a new licence for Photoshop and later Lightroom.

I would agree with that list of the 5% who do professional things Chromebooks arent for professionals they are for average home users looking for inexpensive simplicity. Macs are for Graphic Designers and Photographers, PCs for Engineering Designers and most Architects.

I dont miss the upgrades that constantly grab your Windows PC, the viruses, the malware, the slow boot up and the hours spent recovering from various problems or the expense. Thats what many ordinary users would like to loose like all the Microsoft jokes testify.

Al

[Sweep]

Thanks again fir this thread al - food for thought - encouraged me to pedal round to the local pc world last night. Yes the chromebook looked nice and compact and solid but i fear i would find the lack of access to basecamp a problem.

I did check out the asus unit recommended above (thanks) but though i liked the size i am afraid that it looked a bit flimsy. There was an interesting acer convertible PC at a good price but i fear it was a tad too big.

This might have possibilitues.



http://www.phoneshopbysainsburys.co.uk/ ... 0wodBPMHNA

[matt_twam_asi]

Is there a good photo viewer/sorter that works with RAW images? One of my main uses of PC based lightroom is to download (sometimes hundreds of) RAW images from my camera and then to quickly sort through them and select the ones I want to upload to my public photo storage. Lightroom is very good for this, you can use the rating feature or simply mark photos as a "pick" then you can select all images with a rating above, or select all picks and then convert them to .jpg for upload. I had a quick look at the Polarr app and that does a great job of editing adjusting RAW images but as far as I can tell does not seem to have the selecting/sorting/exporting feature of Lightroom.

I don't how well these will work with the Chromebook OS, but these are some Linux alternatives to Lightroom. All programs except Corel Aftershot Pro are Free & Open Source:

Darktable - Closest to Lightroom for features, it's the one I use but the UI takes a bit of getting used to. It can do everything that you need from your description.
Corel Aftershot Pro 2 I used this before I switched to Darktable. The software is good but Corel got a bashing from the users a couple of years ago due to the lack of updates. The Corel team seem to have got their act together now, and if I hadn't already moved on to Darktable then I would probably still be using it as it has (IMO) the best UI & UX.
Shotwell Good for library management but not many options for editing.

Honourable mentions (I haven't used them but they may be useful to your needs):

Photivo - Good for integration with GIMP.
Fotoxx

[Psamathe]

Is there a good photo viewer/sorter that works with RAW images? One of my main uses of PC based lightroom is to download (sometimes hundreds of) RAW images from my camera and then to quickly sort through them and select the ones I want to upload to my public photo storage. Lightroom is very good for this, you can use the rating feature or simply mark photos as a "pick" then you can select all images with a rating above, or select all picks and then convert them to .jpg for upload. I had a quick look at the Polarr app and that does a great job of editing adjusting RAW images but as far as I can tell does not seem to have the selecting/sorting/exporting feature of Lightroom.

I don't how well these will work with the Chromebook OS, but these are some Linux alternatives to Lightroom. All programs except Corel Aftershot Pro are Free & Open Source:

Darktable - Closest to Lightroom for features, it's the one I use but the UI takes a bit of getting used to. It can do everything that you need from your description.
Corel Aftershot Pro 2 I used this before I switched to Darktable. The software is good but Corel got a bashing from the users a couple of years ago due to the lack of updates. The Corel team seem to have got their act together now, and if I hadn't already moved on to Darktable then I would probably still be using it as it has (IMO) the best UI & UX.
Shotwell Good for library management but not many options for editing.

Honourable mentions (I haven't used them but they may be useful to your needs):

Photivo - Good for integration with GIMP.
Fotoxx

Although a lot depends what you use software for, one of the main features of Lightroom is it's non-destructive editing. i.e. every edit you make to an image does not edit the image file. Changes are applied to a Lightroom database and applied to the image when displayed (or exported). However, that database it proprietary and does not port to other software packages. So to switch to an alternative you would have to export all your images and lose a significant aspect to Lightroom, important to many (something I find particularly useful).

I don't think any of the software alternatives you list would work on ChromeOS (all Windows/Mac/Linux - which is a very different architecture)

Ian

[matt_twam_asi]

Darktable can import quite a lot of information from Lightroom's sidecar files - https://www.darktable.org/usermanual/ch ... 8.html.php

Of course, hardware limitations also apply - a Chromebook probably isn't the best device for extensive RAW photo editing so this may all be moot.