Google's Own Laptop: Chromebook 550

It seems like Google wants to try it hands on almost everything. From mobile phone market to cloud storage, this search engine giant has become the most dominating and influencing force in the market ever since it released the android operating system for mobile phones.

A few years back Google announced that it was working on a desktop computer based operating system and they called it chrome, please do not confuse it with the chrome internet browser as these are two different things. For years Google worked to build a web of services to support its operating system. Little did we knew back then that Google will come out with a laptop of its own, yes that’s exactly what we are going to review today i.e. the chrome book.

Google stated that the future of computing is cloud based. According to Google you won’t need expensive and powerful hardware as most of the processing load will be handled by the powerful cloud servers. Chromebook is a step in the same direction. It is a laptop computer that is inexpensive and is meant for people who do most of their work online. Today we are going to review the Google chromebook 550.

Features:
Google joined hands with Samsung to produce Samsung chromebook 550, while Samsung took care of the hardware manufacturing and assembling, Google supervises design and development.

It features a 1.3 GHz Intel processor that has two cores. A dual core processor means faster processing speeds and chrome book doesn’t disappoints on this, the startup time, right from the moment you press the power button to the moment the operating system has completely loaded is just 8 seconds. Now that has to be one of the fastest loading times.

The performance of chrome is attributed not to just its dual core processor but also to its super duper fast hard disk. Chromebook 550 comes installed with a 160GB SSD hard disk. If you folks don’t know what SSD is then let us tell you that it is the fastest drive out there in the market, SSD is an acronym for solid state drive and it has no moving parts what so ever so the chances of it crashing on you are minimal. Another component that contributes in its performance is the RAM, it has a 4GB DDR3 RAM. Let us assure you that DDR3 is the latest technology for RAMs at the moment.

Coming to its display, well we have no complains in this department. Chromebook 550 comes with a 12.1 inch full high definition screen. We watched some high definition content on it and we swear that it produces all those perfect blacks and whites. Every color comes alive on this display.

Pros:

• Really lightweight and thin. It is one of the most comfortable notebooks to use.
• Longer battery life, every component installed in the chromebook is power savvy.
• Inexpensive, you can buy a chrome book at half the price of a laptop.
• Free 100gb cloud storage space from Google.

Cons:

• Low processing power.
• Chrome operating system, since most of the world is well versed on windows; some people might find it difficult to use it.
• Not a full blown power house, even the operating system is minimal.

Verdict:

If you are a professional who does most of his work online then chromebook is the best option for  you but if you are someone looking for a powerful computer to play games on it then this product is not suitable for you.

Adam Raddick is a computer engineer and has been working on chromebook development with Google since the last 3 years. He also writes electronic product reviews that explain how the computing environment will evolve in the near future.