Chromebook For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Introduction

Laptop sales have been declining for years. This decline is mainly due to the rise in popularity of smartphones and tablets in the consumer market. Technology is getting smaller, faster, and more portable, so the world’s dependence on full-size, full-featured (and some would say bloated) computers with fixed connections has begun to decrease.

However, in this declining market, the rising star is the Chromebook — a low-cost, portable computer powered by Google’s ChromeOS, the first popular operating system inspired by and designed specifically for the internet. Unlike Windows PCs and the Mac, which were designed for general computer use with several large applications and local storage, Chromebooks are designed primarily for internet use. Instead of a gigantic hard drive, Chromebook relies mainly on cloud-based storage. Instead of lots of expensive memory, Chromebook uses the Chrome browser that doesn’t use a lot of memory. And instead of resident applications, Chromebook uses mainly web-based applications that are accessed and bookmarked through the Chrome Web Store and the Google Play store.

By offloading the bulk of the functionality to the cloud, Google made it possible for hardware manufacturers to create computers with hardware configurations designed specifically for life on the web. The result is an accessible, user-friendly computer with a much lower price point, making it an excellent option for schools, students, companies, and budget-conscious people needing ...