Gadgetory

Google's Chrome OS is for more than just Chromebooks i'm dan ackerman and this is the lenovo thinkcentre chromebox now chromebox is what you call a computer that runs Google's Chrome OS but it's built into a desktop chassis rather than a laptop shape and that's what Chromebooks are why would you want to have Chrome OS in a desktop well that's a good question its uses are actually fairly limited because with chrome OS you basically get a fancy version of Google's Chrome browser a couple of very minor kind of you know file and storage options and that's really about it it's meant to be an online-only device so you're basically surfing the internet all day every day now if you're at work and that's what Lenovo ThinkCentre line is for the basically work computers and you need to access your company email but it's a web-based email well that'll work or use a cloud-based office things like like Microsoft's Office online or Google Docs that'll work also if you need to do very specific things like photo and video editing and using Photoshop well that's going to present a problem because you can't download and install apps on a Chrome OS system you can however use cloud-based alternatives like Pixlr and polar for photo editing those actually both work fairly well and you can also use the cloud versions of microsoft office so you can use Google Docs whether it's a word processing document or spreadsheets and of course you can do media streaming on here just fine things like Spotify work well as does netflix the reason why you'd want to get a Chrome OS desktop for you or your employees because they're very inexpensive this thing starts at about two hundred dollars we have a fancier version here that has an intel core i3 processor a very mainstream fairly powerful processor and that's about $300 a little bit more a little bit less depending on on who's selling them online and for that you get the base unit it throws in a wired keyboard and mouse nothing special there you get a antenna you have to screw into the back if you want to use Wi-Fi instead of a wired internet connection and this cool little stand you actually don't need the stand if you want this thing to stand up upright it'll stay fairly well you can also lay it down flat like this or even hide it behind your monitor lenovo makes a special monitor that this will just slot in it becomes almost like an all-in-one computer or of course you can put it on the special stand like this and it holds it at a decent angle you can get to the couple of ports in the front around the back there's also a lot of other ports two more USB threes on top of the two USB 3s in the front ethernet obviously hdmi and displayport that's how you know it's a work machine DisplayPort that very confident offices not so much at home so if you walk into the morning and you find one of these on your desk this is the scientist or where computer you're probably not going to be too enthusiastic it's not the most exciting computer in the world but if you or your employees just need to access online only tools and you don't want to spend a lot to do it this is certainly a fine way to get people online i'm han ackman and that is the lenovo thinkcentre chromebox