Network File Browser front end for ChromeOS and Chromebooks

(Here, I am accessing my ArchLinux Pogo Plug ARM server via SFTP on my Chromebook)

One of the thing that the  Chromebook (ChromeOS) lacks is the ability to access local network share.
This isn't a glaring omission nor oversight on behalf of Google. As we know, they designed Chrome OS to be an Internet device that uses Google services. Chromebooks are designed and sold to access the public Internet.

However, if you are a home user who wants to access his local files on his local NAS or network file server, you are out of luck.  Maybe you are a school IT administrator who is also looking into deploying Chromebooks but want his school staff and students to access the local network file server.

Well, you can. Sort of. It requires building a front-end to your network shares using some popular open-source projects and this blog post will chronicle two of them:
Pydio (formerly AjaXplorer) and OwnCloud.

Both are PHP front ends that allow you to access file servers using just a web browser. Both have their plus and minuses. In short, you will need a LAMP stack box to act as the gateway to your file services. In other words, you'll need a Linux/OSX/Unix based web server to act as a middleman gateway. Think of them as mini, low-end consumer, small business asset management systems that works in the browser.

Read On.

This blog article will about these two projects with the idea of using them for Chromebooks. Sure, you can use them with any computer, browser but the point is to have a solution for Chromebook users to access their network file servers.

Six months with the Samsung Chromebook

It has been close to six months since I got my Samsung Exynos (ARM) powered Chromebook.
I've been using quite a bit lately and have some time to reflect on using it.

The same criticism I had in the beginning still hold true. The device is still very limited in what you can do with it. However, it's strengths are the reason I still use it.

Chromebook making inroads into K-12 Education and growing

I came across this WSJ article on the market share grab of Chromebooks.
You can read the entire article here: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304856504579338941198812358

(image: WSJ)

I can totally see this happening. I've interviewed quite a number of schools and I have friends that are in the IT business for schools. Schools are strapped for cash and Chromebooks are highly appealing. They don't have to worry about maintaining servers, infrastructure, security, storage. I am also not surprised at the iPad penetration. Every private school I interviewed for my kids, the iPad was in the curriculum. However, the difference is the Chromebooks are way cheaper to purchase and to maintain from an infrastructure point of view.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next few years. There are those who dismiss Chromebooks but at $200, they're practically disposable and bullet proof for little kids. My five year constantly drops and abuses his Chromebook and we don't even worry about it to much. Most of the school curriculum are web based and unfortunately, many of them still use Adobe Flash so he turns to his Chromebook quite a bit over his iOS device.

In the meantime, Microsoft appoints a new CEO with a strong cloud infrastructure background. There is hope Satya Nadella has some sort of education strategy in place. Today's children are future customers for any of the tech giants.

Here is case study of how a Kentucky private school deployed chromebooks for their middleschoolers. Link: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/private-schools-chromebook-program-explains-why-googles-laptops-have-captured-nearly-20-of-the-educational-market/

The most telling quote is this:

"While cost savings can be made on the cost of the hardware alone, the majority of the cost savings originate from savings made from infrastructure and device management.

I think that is what really matters. The infrastructure cost and ease-of-management.

Chromebook, a kid's first computer.

That is my 5 year old sitting on his future to-be inherited "Tony Stark" Eames lounger with his kiddie laptop, an Acer Chromebook. That is his place to lounge and pretend he is like dad. Robert Downey Jr's lounger in Iron Man 3 was a fake replica, this is a real deal but is this chromebook a real laptop or just another wannabee kiddie toy? Lots of people have a prejudice against a limited "cloud-only" based device like the Chromebook, myself included. I may not be the intended audience for this device but I figure school grade kids might find this "kiddie" laptop useful. This post is about how my kid uses his junior laptop.

For my use, the Chromebooks (both my Samsung and the Acer) are fairly limited except for the casual browsing of the Craigslist classifieds while I am lounging.  For my son, it is his real computer. So he thinks! He's been doing his kindergarten homework (Flash based) and he watches youtube video of Gangham style Star Wars music videos. I gave him the Acer model because, well, I like the Samsung more. I doubt he will ever need to use it more than the three hour at a time run-time on the Acer. Plus, it has a 320GB hard drive that I can fill it up with cartoons in MP4 format for off-line viewing. Hence, the Acer is a better fit for him.

You can't go wrong with these Chromebooks for a five year old. They cost around $100-140 refurb. Basically, if they break, you won't make a big fuss about it. Unlike a cheap Android tablet, Chrome OS doesn't have the thousands of useless mind numbing games to keep my kid pre-occupied. The most damage he can do is venture into some questionable youtube videos on his own. He is five so he can barely read. I doubt he will do any damage by going to the internet on his own. I have a few bookmarks of where he needs to go and he can click away to "play" with his assigned homework from school.

ChromeOS and Chromebooks are suitably perfect for a five year old. Hence, you can't really call it a "replica" or fake computer. I think of it as a computer with training wheels. I've have to reset and restore the device a few times. However, after a factory reset, the Chromebook is back and running in a few minutes. No lengthly re-installs. Developer mode for hacking is ill-advise for a kid who can barely read the dialogues. 

In the past, I've tried a few kid's specific Linux distros, the OLPC build, and even a locked down OSX Parental control account on the mac with a locked down dock. With all of those, my kid still figures a way to do some damage like pulling out the bootable USB stick or memorizing my passwords (by looking over the shoulder) which enables him to login into my desktop. With Chrome OS, he has his own account and it is pretty much fool-proof. Again, this is design is child-friendly.

Once in a while, the wireless would cut-out. Sure, this would piss most people off but it doesn't bother me so much because it cuts into his computer time. Another good reason to check on what he is doing. I simply disable and re-enable the Wi-Fi and he is back to using it.

Now, a computer with just homework is simply no fun. Sure there are games on the Chrome store but they pretty much stink. My son also has an iPod touch and he prefers that for gaming Cut the Rope. We let him play with his iPod touch 1-2 hours a week on the weekends. With the Chromebook, the only source of entertainment is to watch curated videos. The Acer does have 320GB of storage and I could copy movies at random but I found just using Plex, my life becomes a whole lot easier.

There is no dedicated Plex app for Chrome OS but the web interface works just fine. Both the Samsung and Acer can stream up to 1080p videos and for the type it can't stream, my PLEX server transcodes.

With Plex, I just type in the URL , http://[IP Address of PLEX server]:32400/web , and he uses the web client as you see below.

So far, this works pretty good in my household. My kid doesn't have a bookmark and doesn't know the address of the PLEX server so I have to enter it in for him. This way, I can keep check on his usage. I'm sure when he is around 7-8, he'll figure it out on his own. He hasn't drop his laptop yet and I'm not really worried about it. If he does break it, it will be a good lesson in responsibility. He thinks it is expensive and I don't want to tell him otherwise so he is extra careful. It is his own device and he takes pride in ownership. Unlike the iPads and other tablets in the house, this isn't a shared device. He owns it and is responsible for it like remembering to charge it.

I should be getting my MIIPC in shortly if they ever ship it but for now, the Acer Chromebook makes my little man feel like he is just like his dad - a geek.

Here is the desk of a five year old future geek.

Now back to Tony Stark, that Eames Lounge and Ottoman is a Plycraft replica by just looking at the head-rest and foot base. My son brought that up. He'll grow up to be a watch and furniture snob just like his dad.

Living with Chrome OS

I've been trying to wrap my head around the idea of going cloud-only. Supposedly, it is the future of computing and there are many strong advocates of Chrome OS. I've been playing with my two Chromebooks and my opinion is still the same. It will be a long time before the majority of us go cloud-only.

Here are some anecdotes  of my life with Chrome OS and Chromebooks.

Acer C7 Chromebook Quick Review

So I ended up getting an Acer C7 Chromebook. It was $122 refurb so I figured why not.

The Acer C7 Chromebook (C710-2847) is basically a rebadged, re-worked 11.6 netbook running Chrome OS. It is based off the Acer Aspire V5-171. Acer didn't do much to the design except swap out a few keyboard labels.

It is as boring as it gets. 11.6" screen with piss poor viewing angles and an anemic battery life of 3 hours. Did I mention I got it for $122? That is the saving grace. The chassis is made of the cheapest tupperware plastic that can be found yet it manages to pull down 3 pounds in weight. This is a half pound heaver than the Samsung Series 3 Chromebook.

So how does it compare to the Samsung's ARM based Chromebook? See below.

Generally speaking, the Acer is much faster due to the fact it is running an INTEL processor. There are various benchmarks showing the speed advantage of the Acer. It also has three USB ports, a VGA port, HDMI, and an 10/100 ethernet. The Samsung model lacks the ethernet, one less USB and does without the VGA. I can see the advantage to having the onboard ethernet for some scenarios.

Also, because it runs on an X86 platform, it has a much wider selection of INTEL only applications like VNC Viewer which is unavailable on the Samsung.

Another advantage to the Acer is it the fact it has a 320GB storage. That may or may not be important to you but with 320GB, you can probably store quite a few MP4 movies for local playback. Hence, the Acer isn't a total disaster. It is also much more upgrade-able. You can easily up the RAM cheaply and this makes it a decent UBUNTU portable netbook if you are so inclined to go that route. The 3 hour battery life can be fixed with a larger 6, 9 cell battery that you can buy later on.

However, I would still pick the Samsung over the Acer. The Samsung has a better fit-n-finish. The screen, keyboard, and trackpads are much better. The keyboard on the Samsung has better travel and the trackpad operates with less glitches than the Acer. The Acer also heats up under use. The Samsung can be used on a lap while lounging whereas the Acer gets warm after a few minutes. Lastly, out-of-the-box, the Samsung has a better runtime of 6-7 hours.

So there you have it. My short take on the Acer C7 Chromebook. Did I mention I got it for  $122!

USB dongle for Samsung Chromebook

I can confirm the Apple USB 2.0 10/100 Ethernet dongle works fine with the ARM base Samsung Chromebook. It is a plug-n-play affair. Unfortunately, my gigabit ASIX dongles don't work yet.
So if you want a wired connection, you know where to start.

Samsung Chromebook notebook review

Despite my misgivings, I broke down and got myself a Samsung Chromebook. Pictured above and stacked on top of my 15" Macbook Retina Pro, the Chromebook is tiny!

It is a basically a web browser using the internals of a mobile tablet in an 11" netbook form factor. I got it because I wanted to see if I could be cloud-only. Short answer, "hell no."  However, the free 100GB of cloud storage for two years pretty much pays for the device. I also wanted to play with ARM running a polished desktop OS (yes, I consider Chrome OS a real OS albeit different). And lastly, it makes a good computer for the guest room.

Read my end user review for my impressions on this device.

Waiting for Chromebook refresh

Rumor has it that there will be a new, updated quad-core Exynos Samsung Chromebook announced at Google I/O in the next few weeks.

I've been really tempted to get the current one for tinkering. Why? Why not. I am not interesting in cheap x86 netbooks you can get for the same price. Sure, a few of you can point to some nice 11.6 ASUS touchscreen ones for a few bucks more. Moreover, I already have enough laptops lying around. What interests me is the ARM architecture; running anything but INTEL. I really just want a super light-weight, portable, long battery device to do some MySQL work locally. I'm currently using an iPad w/ keyboard SSH remotely. It works but I prefer to run something locally.

I don't know if I could deal with just Chrome OS. I've been playing with it under VM and I can't see myself using it full time even with developer mode and cruoton. I've also been paying attention to the latest Linux kernel support and running Linux on those books in general. Things are progressing to a point where full-time ARM linux desktop is viable.

Lets see! I may pop for one in the next few weeks. If the new one is compelling, I may get it. If not, I', heading over Best Buy to get the current one open-box at discount. They get a high return rate so there are plenty of open-box returns at great prices.