Living With The Acer C720 Chromebook for A Month (Part 5)

In this part I'll talk more in-depth about video playback with the Acer C720.

YouTube

The Acer C720 plays back all YouTube videos without a problem, I've not had any problem playing back Standard Definition, 720P HD, 1080P HD & even 4K HD. I really can't see the point of why anyone would want to playback a 4K video on an 11.6" Ultrabook, but out of curiosity when I saw the 4K option on a YouTube I had to try it out to see how well the Acer C720 would handle it.

Locally stored videos

The Acer C720 can handle locally stored or streamed over USB from an external HDD all video formats that you can throw at it ether natively or via a third-party video player, the only slight problem I've come across was when I tried to playback an episode of Game Of Thrones in .mkv format, where the video played-back but it couldn't playback the audio for some reason, and so far I've not found a way to playback .mkv encoded videos, but at least a Chromebook can be used as a portable media player & the inclusion of a full-sized HDMI port on the Acer C720 means that it can be hooked up to a TV and be used as an inexpensive media player even though the 16GB of SSD storage is a bit limiting.

Streaming videos

I've not really tried using streaming video services like Netflix on the C720 yet but it's possible to store videos on Google Drive and stream them to the C720 but the free 100GB of Google Drive for 2 years combined with the free as standard 25GB of Google Drive storage space might be a bit of a limiting factor due to Google Drive being used to the rest of your data, and a subscription to a higher storage plan might be wise but once you go past the 100GB plan they start to get on the high price  a month or year.

Conclusion

The Acer C720 is a capable machine for video playback, but you're going to have to think hard about whether you're going to store your videos on the limited internal storage or whether you're going to use an external HDD or SD Card.

If you want to stream videos I'd seriously consider using a service like Netflix over using your Google Drive storage as using Google Drive could become an expensive option considering that you also store your pictures and Documents  on Google Drive.

Google could do with adding a video Upload feature to Play Movies & TV like they've got on Play Music, it'd allow Chromebook users along with Android users as they'd be able to watch their video Uploads on any device that supports the Play Movies & TV app along with any computer running Chrome that supports the use of Chrome web apps.

Roland

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Living With The Acer C720 Chromebook for A Month (Part 4)

This part also ties in with my earlier post that talks about Touch Typing on my Toshiba Satellite C660-15R so I wont go over that post and make this one a huge rambling post.

Since getting my Acer C720 Chromebook on Monday I've tried to really get into touch typing, the Chiclet Keyboard really lends itself to Touch Typing as the Keys are nicely spaced out meaning that it's hard to catch the wrong key as you type.

I'm finding that I'm getting fewer errors from catching the wrong key, but I'm getting a few from accidental finger slippage when reaching for the right key, and I'm not at the point where I feel comfortable not looking down at the Keyboard (but I expect that as I get used to Touch Typing I'll start looking at the Keyboard less.

Conclusion

With the Keys on the Acer C720 Keyboard as with all Chromebook Keyboards being a Chiclet Keyboard the keys aren't as squished as most Laptop Keyboards.

[caption id="attachment_1821" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Cramped Keyboard Layout of the Toshiba Satellite C660-15R Keyboard[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1827" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Acer C720 Chiclet Keyboard[/caption]

I can't say this for the other Chromebook Keyboards as the Acer C720 is the only Chromebook that I've used, but the keys don't seem to have as much lateral movement as the Keyboard on my Toshiba Satellite C660-15R, and with the keys being set in the front of the case means that they don't feel as if they will come off the Keyboard tray.

Also due to the lack of lateral movement or being squished together the key press sound is considerably quieter than that of my Toshiba Satellite C660-15R and almost silent in comparison to a Desktop Keyboard that has an audible click clack every time you press a key.

I know that many reviewers have knocked the Acer C720 Keyboard for being noisy but I don't consider it to be noisy, as I was typing up a post for this series that will probably get posted on Monday there was only me and my little son who was asleep at the time & I'd got the TV on with the volume turned down low and the noise of me typing was hardly noticeable.

It's by no means a quiet Keyboard as It's probably going to make a physical Keyboard that's going to make 100% no noise whatsoever.

Roland

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Living With The Acer C720 Chromebook for A Month (Part 3)

Display

The display on the Acer C720 has a matte finish instead of having a glossy finish meaning that there is no glare in sunlight, but this in turn means that the colours are slightly washed out although the colour reproduction is still pretty accurate.

Video Playback

Unlike Chromium OS Chrome OS can playback all YouTube videos, it's even capable of playing back 4k YouTube videos. Most locally stored videos are capable of being played back natively, some need a different video player installing from the Chrome web store.

HD videos playback fine given that there is only 2GB of RAM in the C720. The only problem I've come across is that HD videos in .mkv format playback without sound.

Sound

Sound reproduction is excellent considering the speakers are on the underside of the laptop. Sounds not tinny and considering the size of them sound doesn't distort at full volume and is extremely loud.

The speakers on the C720 put the top mounted speakers on my Toshiba Satellite C660-15R to shame.

Unlike Chromium OS Chrome OS is capable of playing back music, & with Adobe Flash working it also means that music uploaded to Play Music also plays back.

Conclusion

The Acer C720 Chromebook is an excellent device for media playback while on the move as long as you've ether got your media stored on the internal storage or access to the Internet.

Battery Life

The battery life on the C720 is excellent and will put the battery life of any conventional laptop to shame. I can easily get the quoted 8.5 hours heavy use out of it, even though it's not constant use.

Roland

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Living With The Acer C720 Chromebook for A Month (Part 2)

Chromebook Keyboard

The Chromebook Chiclet Keyboard is well laid out & resembles a MacBook Keyboard with the F Keys that you get on a PC Keyboard replaced by handy system short cuts, the Windows Key/cmd Key on a Mac has been removed along with the Delete Key & the CAPS Lock Key has been replaced by a Search Key.

Pressing ctrl +alt + ? brings up a handy list of Keyboard short cuts, which is a good idea considering the amount of shortcuts spread over the shift, ctrl, alt Keys that it would be too hard to remember.

[caption id="attachment_1834" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Chrome OS Keyboard Short cut Pop up[/caption]

Build Quality

The Chrome OS Keyboard doesn't have the premium feel of  a Mac Keyboard, but compared to the cheap feel of some of the other Laptop Keyboards around it's of a good quality.

There is slightly more travel to the keys than that of a normal Laptop Keyboard and the clicking of the keys when pressed is quieter than a normal Laptop Keyboard.

Conclusion

The Chrome OS Keyboard is an improvement over a regular Laptop Keyboard, but compared to a Desktop PC Keyboard it doesn't have the same solid build quality. But it's still a quality Keyboard considering the price of Chromebooks compared to Windows Laptops and MacBooks.

[caption id="attachment_1827" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Acer C720 Chiclet Keyboard[/caption]

Chromebook Touchpad

The Chromebook Touchpad is multi-touch allowing you to scroll through webpages, scroll through the app drawer & scroll through open Chrome Tabs, along with left & right-click without using physical buttons.

There are 4 embedded physical buttons 2 on the top left & right of the Touchpad & 2 on the bottom left & right of the Touchpad, all 4 of the buttons do the left click which kind of defeats the object of having physical buttons, but the only time I've found myself using one of the physical buttons is when I need to drag Windows around.

Conclusion

The Acer C720 Chromebook Touchpad is one of the best Laptop Touchpads around, it's not the premium Glass Touchpad used on the MacBook, but compared to the Touchpad used by Windows-based Laptops the extra space gained for moving the mouse pointer around by having the physical buttons embedded under the Touchpad surface is a welcome change.

[caption id="attachment_1835" align="aligncenter" width="300"] The Acer C720 Chromebook Touchpad[/caption]

Roland

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Living With The Acer C720 Chromebook for A Month (Part 1)

After using my Chromium OS powered Toshiba Laptop for a month and 3 days I went out and got the Acer C720 Chromebook, so I thought I'd do a follow-up series on using an actual Chromebook. I went with the Acer C720 over the rest of the Chromebook range as I wanted the compact portability of the 11.6" form factor without sacrificing the speed and battery life of the intel Celeron CPU, as the only other x86 based Chromebook on the market is the £249.99 HP Chromebook 14 which then bumps the weight up a bit and the 14" screen sort of defeats the object of getting a Ultrabook like the Chromebook. I discounted the Arm based Chromebooks as they are slightly more money for something that basically uses a mobile phone/tablet CPU and the only Arm based Chromebook that I like is the HP Chromebook 11 which I've not seen on sale anywhere in the UK.

Specification

 Processor:     intel Celeron 2955U

RAM:               2GB

HDD:               16GB SSD

Screen:            11.6" 1366 x 768

WiFi:               802.11 a/b/g/n Dualband

Pointing:        Multi touch touchpad with integrated left and right buttons

Bluetooth, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, SD Card reader/writer, 3.5mm combined headphone & microphone jack, full size HDMI out & 0.9mp webcam.

dimensions:    288 x 202 x 19mm (W, D, H)

Weight:            1.2kg

Keyboard:       Custom Chrome OS Chiclet style Keyboard

Battery Life:   8.5hrs

[caption id="attachment_1826" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Acer C720 Chromebook[/caption]

The C720 is rated at a 7 sec boot time (I've not timed it) but it boots up pretty fast. the screen is pretty bright but does have a pretty tight viewing angle and seems fairly artefact free (but I've not put it through its paces yet). The Chiclet Keyboard is small due to the size of the Chromebook, but it's well laid out and is fairly easy to touch type on. The keys are pretty quiet when pressed and have a nice solid feel with a decent amount of travel. Unlike a regular Keyboard there are only 10 function keys across the top (instead of having F1-F10 labels,they have icons for the functions forwards, backwards, reload, full-screen/windowed, task switcher, brightness, brightness +, mute, volume -, volume +) then the power button , the CAPS LOCK key has been replaced by a Search button & the Delete key has been removed.

[caption id="attachment_1827" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Acer C720 Chiclet Keyboard[/caption]

The Touchpad is of a comparable size to that of one on a regular Laptop or Ultrabook and having a multi-touch Touchpad is a welcome change for a Laptop under £200. the 0.9mp webcam is a bit of a let down as it's pretty grainy in low light, but will do for Skype or Google Hangouts video calls. The battery life seems decent under medium heavy workload (will have to see what it's like under a full day of use). The build quality is solid for a budget  Ultrabook even though it's mostly plastic, and will look good when used on a Train, Plain or even Coffee Shop. As a bonus you get 100GB of Google Drive Storage free for 2 year, 60 Days of Google Play Music  All Access & 12 free Gogo in-air internet passes.

Roland

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Touch Typing On The Toshiba Satellite C660-15R Keyboard

I've tried to use the Chrome Web App Typing Club to learn how to touch type, but after many a frustrated hour trying to go through the exercises on my Toshiba Satellite C660-15R running Chromium OS 28 I've come to the conclusion that the Keyboard style used by Toshiba isn't the best for touch typing as the keys are close together and are too flat to touch type on (or learn to touch type on at any rate) as it's far too easy to catch the wrong key by accident by just reaching for the key that you actually want to hit.

[caption id="attachment_1821" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Cramped Keyboard Layout of the Toshiba Satellite C660-15R Keyboard[/caption]

I think that the best keyboard layout to learn to touch type is probably the Chiclet keyboard introduced by Apple in the MacBook range of Laptops & Ultrabooks that now seems to have been adopted as the only keyboard layout for Chromebooks. I've never touched a Chromebook keyboard, but do occasionally use a MacBook keyboard when at the in-laws (but never tried to touch type on it)but the spacing of the keys from each other does make it feel more comfortable to use and presumably far more easier to be able to touch type on.

[caption id="attachment_1820" align="aligncenter" width="300"] The Chiclet or island style keyboard[/caption]

I've in the past learnt how to touch type on an electric typewriter & even continued touch typing on a conventional Desktop keyboard

[caption id="attachment_1822" align="aligncenter" width="300"] The conventional layout of a Desktop keyboard[/caption]

But once I got my first Laptop back in I think it was 2004-2005 I stopped touch typing in favour of typing with two fingers & then developed my own speed typing by only using two or three fingers. S I decided to try and take up touch typing again, but with the cramped flat key layout of modern laptop keyboards it's impossibly slow and error ridden typing and takes me twice as long to type as it does with my own weird speed typing method.

It'd be nice to see more OEM's than just the Chromebook OEM's & Apple use the Chiclet or Island style keyboard, even the likes of HP, Acer & Samsung don't use the Chiclet style keyboard on their Windows Laptops.

Sure you've got to reach for the key you want with the Chiclet style keyboard, but in the long run it'll make touch typing easier to learn for the Laptop generation & even make it easier for people to transition between touch typing on a desktop computer & a Laptop, even Apple use the Chiclet style keyboard for Desktop Computers, so why shouldn't more Laptops than just the MacBook range & Chromebook range use a Chiclet style keyboard.

I'm hopeful that LG will go with a conventional Chromebook Chiclet keyboard for their forthcoming Chromebase AIO PC instead of modifying a standard Desktop Keyboard for Chrome OS.

Roland

The Chromebook Test: Living In Google Chrome For A Month (Conclusion)

Well the month is up and I've fallen in love with the Chromebook concept, as they're more affordable than the Windows powered Ultrabooks on the market & the MacBook Air.

The big selling points in my opinion are:

1. Lightweight & Portable
   Chromebooks are more lightweight and portable than Netbooks that are on the market and have a bigger screen and keyboard making them easier to use.


2. Affordable Computing
   They are more affordable than Ultrabooks that use Windows 8.1 or the MacBook Air meaning that anyone can afford one.


3. Don't have to re-install all Applications or Drivers when re-install Chrome OS
   All your Applications saved in your Google Account meaning that if you buy a new Chromebook or do a factory reset everything just syncs back to your Chromebook, & you don't need Hardware Drivers for all the Hardware in your Chromebook.

Storage Upgrade

The only drawback to a Chromebook is the measly 16GB of SSD Storage meaning that you don't get much space to store files locally & with the internal SSD being of a super slimline portable format to a regular SSD you can't go to PC World or an independent Computer shop and buy an SSD to upgrade and it's probably going to take a bit of searching online to find anywhere to get an upgrade from. I found a website that makes the form factor SSD's used in Chromebooks, but they only do 128GB which is still on the small side compared to a regular 2.5" Laptop SSD that can go up to 240GB of Storage, and the retailers that sell the Chromebook size SSD's only seem to be USA, Australian or Chinese based meaning that if you live in Europe you'll be having to wait a while for one to arrive and will possibly have to deal with import duty if you purchase one meaning that it could be a costly upgrade.

Usage

The reliance of being online all the time to do anything that can't be done offline means that you'll need to have a MiFi unit or Mobile Phone with Tethering when you're away from home or anywhere without an Internet connection.

Chrome Web Store

One big problem that's not to do with Chromebooks or Chrome OS/Chromium OS is the rather poorly designed Chrome Web Store that says that all Apps are Free even if they're only limited trials that then need an ongoing Subscription, or in the case of some games on the Chrome Web Store needing an in Game Purchase to unlock the game fully.

This can  be a bit miss leading especially if you install a game and get nearly all the way to the end and find that you can't complete it without an in-game purchase to unlock the full game.

Chromium OS on none Chromebook Hardware

The drawbacks of using Chromium OS on none Chromebook Hardware are.

1. There is no Search Key on none Chromebook Hardware Keyboards
   The lack of a Search key means that even if you set the Search key within Chrome Settings nothing happens, but you can disable the CAPS LOCK Key.


2. Still Heavy and lacks portability
   Making your own Chromebook using Chromium OS still means that you've got the lack of portability and weight of the Laptop you've used unless you use a pre Windows 8/8.1 Ultrabook.


3. Poor Battery life
   You still have the Battery life of the Laptop you've used, but you do get a slight increase in Battery life over Windows or Linux, but you can always purchase an extra battery or two and swap them out as required.


4. A redundant internal CD/DVD Drive
   You've got a CD/DVD Drive built into your Laptop that you'll probably never use while using Chromium OS & I'm not even sure if an internal IDE CD/DVD Drive will even work within Chromium OS.


5. Lack of Flash Player Support
   Adobe Flash Player isn't supported in Chromium OS so you'll struggle to watch most YouTube Videos and won't be able to listen to music on Google Play Music.


6. Lack of Media Support
   mp3,mp4 and some other Media Codecs aren't supported meaning that you'll not be able to listen to locally stored music or watch locally stored videos.

Conclusion

If you want a distraction free work environment to write letters, create Spreadsheets & Presentations along with check your email & social Networks e.t.c then Chromium OS is the ideal OS for you, but if you need full Media & Flash Player support then you're better off just getting a Chromebook (which I'll be doing at some point in the future).

Roland

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