- What's up guys?
Pete Moriarty here recording another quick video for you
and today, again, we are talking about Chromebooks.
I'm getting so many questions about Chromebooks
this week which is awesome.
I really love answering these guys
and yeah, thanks so much for asking them.
We've got questions from Lela, questions from Andy
and we've got one more from Ben as well this week.
So I'm gonna do my best to answer them.
In this video I'm gonna share what things can't
a Chromebook do?
So if you're listening in make sure you say hi,
give us a wave and we'll get started.
So before I get into what a Chromebook can't do
I'm gonna quickly, very quickly recap
on what's a Chromebook great for
just so we can remember what we're talking about,
what these devices are used for.
Number one, they're low cost,
they have ridiculous battery life, right,
so they can last a very long time.
Number three, they're shareable
and number four, they're secure right?
So by shareable I mean because
they're all tied to your Goggle account
it means that anyone can pick up a Chromebook,
sign in with a Google account
and have all their stuff there.
It means the devices make great shared devices.
So if you've got staff out on the road
and they need to, you know, share a device
in a truck between multiple people,
it makes it really easy.
Or if you wanna buy one and just chuck it
in your boardroom, then that's also
very useful for that as well.
Number two, it's secure because they're locked
and connected to your Google account
it means that you can remote wipe.
It means no one's gonna access that machine
that you don't want to access that machine.
It means that if you wanna deploy a policy
to all of the Chromebooks across your business
that says, you know, from something as simple as,
changing the background picture
to something more advanced like disabling the camera
or not allowing someone to tether it to their phone.
I don't know why you'd wanna do that.
But any of the features you wanna lock down
or change or rollout to any Chrome devices
you can do from an admin panel.
Now previously you had to do those
by investing in a Window's server,
an active directory, and IT people to run it
and all of that other mess.
Well Chromebooks just completely eliminated
all those mess.
So that's what Chromebooks do really well,
that's the purpose for Chromebook.
So what can you do on them?
You can work with web apps,
most of our work nowadays is done on the web.
The modern worker spends about four or five hours a day
in web-based apps.
We are no longer using desktop-based apps
in the work day for most people.
Number two, you can also use any Android apps
on modern Chromebooks.
So I've got my Pixelbook here, my Google Pixelbook
so it flips over, it's got the touchscreen
which is pretty cool.
I've got my notes on Google Keep right now
that I'm using for this video.
But any Android app that I want
I can actually install on that Google,
on my Google Chromebook which is really great
because it means that if, I don't need to,
but if I wanted to I could install
something like, I could install something like
Microsoft Excel, I could install Microsoft Word
and use, not the native Window's versions,
not the MAC versions, but the Android versions
of those which are actually pretty good
because I've tested them out.
If I wanted another app like Skype,
which wasn't available in the Chrome Web Store,
I can use the Android version of Skype
on my Chromebook as well.
So you'll find that for most apps,
if they have a decent Android version,
then you're gonna be able to get them running on Chromebook.
Now where does it trip up?
Where do we start to run into problems?
That's the million dollar question.
And if you were to ask me,
what things do I miss after two years
of running on a Chromebook as my primary machine?
Let me list about a few.
Number one, and this is I think the most obvious one,
hardcore media editing, right?
So that's image editing and video editing.
You can do light softcore editing
of images and videos, but the hardcore stuff
doesn't really work.
Now what do I mean by that?
Well Googles got the basics of a image manipulation tool
built into Chrome, right?
So, built into Chrome or WES.
So if you need to resize an image,
change, you know, exportism as a JPG or PNG,
you can do that, all of those basics, right?
There are also apps in the Chrome Store
which allow you to do
those kind of basic image manipulations.
Now it's not a Photoshop and if
you really need a Photoshop if you wanna apply
certain styles, if you're a professional photographer,
then it's just not gonna work for you, right,
that's not what this machine is designed to do.
You can get the absolute basics done
but it's not gonna be great.
Now personally for most of my photo editing
and touch ups and what not,
I'm using Google Photos for that.
That happens to all happen in the web
and you can do it quite a bit with Google Photos.
You can change exposure, you can do things like,
you know, crop and resize
and do all of those kind of things
so that's pretty straightforward right?
But hardcore image editing, if you are
a professional photographer and you really
wanna use your Photoshop
it's probably not gonna work great.
Number two, G'day Tom, how ya going?
Thanks for saying hi.
So number two is hardcore video editing,
so I shoot a lot of video personally
as well as for the business but personally
I shoot a lot of video because I like film making.
So I've got a drone, I've got a GoPro.
When I'm out on the weekend and I'm doing
dumb stuff in my jeep I wanna film it all in 4K
so I can put it on Facebook and YouTube
and that kind of stuff.
But I get all this footage and it really
just doesn't work on the Chromebook, right?
I can edit short videos and snip little bits and pieces
together using online video editors
but for the most part their pretty sucky, right?
If you wanna do hardcore video editing,
if you want story and music
and bringing lots of clips together
and B-roll and the kind of filmmaking
that a professional filmmaker would do,
then it's just not gonna work on a Chromebook,
it sucks, I've tried all of the Chrome apps,
they suck, and I end up using my iMac at home.
This is the only reason why I'm tempted
to maybe pick up like a MacBook Pro
or a MacBook Air to take with me
while I'm traveling because I like
to make films when I travel.
You know like I like to, I like to do that kind of stuff.
So it's just not gonna happen
on a Chromebook unfortunately, don't expect it to happen.
One of my good friends, Jake Howard,
said something really interesting about this
and he basically said, look me not being able
to do this fiddly work, the image editing,
the video editing, is fantastic because
that forces me to delegate and I personally,
I love that as well.
If I'm forced to delegate because
I just can't do that stuff
that I would otherwise be doing
because I wanna do, then it forces me to delegate.
Now obviously with my film making
that's something I don't wanna delegate
I wanna do that on the weekends
'cause that's a personal pleasure for me,
but anything work related, that I can't do on the Chromebook
is potentially something that I should be delegating
to someone else.
What the Chromebook is really great for
is running meetings, leading a team,
responding to emails if you need to do that,
working on Google spreadsheets,
working on any of your Cloud Apps,
reading ba-ra-d-st-own reviews,
drawing pictures with the stylus
if you wanna do that,
taking notes in Google Keep,
joining Hangouts, listening to music.
On the personal side of things
I can do all of my internet banking,
I can watch Netflix, I can do any
of that kind of stuff on the Chromebook
it's just that hardcore media editing
where it starts to slowdown.
Now talking about slowdowns, people can ask
well how powerful is a Chromebook,
how many types can I have open
and how quickly, you know, how quickly do they run?
And in my last video I explained
all the different models are of Chromebooks
and which ones are kind of faster
and which ones are kind of slower
and what price range do you wanna be spending
depending on the kind of work that you're doing.
But you may be spending, if you're a business owner,
you're probably gonna be spending
the six, seven, $800 mark on a decent mid-range Chromebook
or if you wanna go up to something nicer
like Pixelbooks you're spending a little bit more
but you're getting something that's gonna be
a real decent workhorse.
Okay, so finally, one more question from Ben
and that question was what about
Adobe Creative Suite and the other apps
like InDesign, and I just said,
well flat out no, they're Windows or MAC only,
they're not gonna work on a Chromebook.
But there is a bit of a secret.
So there is an app called CrossOver
which runs on Android and therefore runs
on the Chromebook, right, and this app
could CrossOver or let you run Windows Apps
within other platform's architectures, right?
So the whole, the whole endeavor of this app
is to run Windows Apps on Android
and on tablets right?
Now I haven't tested this
but it's possible to try running things like
Adobe Suite via CrossOver on the Chromebook.
Now it's a bit of a fiddly process to jump through
all those hoops just to get stuff
running on the Chromebook
if you really, really, really need to use InDesign.
My personal answer to that question
would be, Ben, delegate more
and have other people doing that.
You should be a CEO and not dicking around
in InDesign yourself.
But, but if you really wanna run something like that,
that's untested so far, so it might be something
that I get our lead team to test out,
but my philosophy is don't try and shove
a square peg into a round hole.
Don't buy Chromebook and try and make
it behave like a MAC or try and make it behave
like a Surface Pro or like a Windows machine.
Know what a Chromebook is great for
which is, reasonable cost, inside battery life,
super secure, connected to your Google account,
everything in sync, it just works, right,
and it does everything on the web
and all of your Cloud-based Apps
absolutely brilliantly and of course
everything in the Google world
absolutely brilliantly as well.
Keep to that, and if you can keep to that,
then you're gonna have a great experience with Chromebooks.
If you haven't bought one yet for your business,
just buy one, even buy one of the cheap ones,
spend 500 bucks, buy a super cheap one,
jump on our store, itGenius.com
and get started with one.
I promise you every customer who's tried just one
has come back to us, and some have said,
hey, this is amazing, I'm never buying a PC again,
I'm rolling this out to all of my staff,
G'day, ma-tu-b thank you very much.
Some have come back to us and said,
yeah, it was good but it only worked in xyz,
certain circumstances, or it only kinda worked
as our shared device in the boardroom,
and that's fine.
But every business who's on G-Suite
should have at least one Chromebook
in the business and if you haven't already,
time to get one for yourself.
So head along to itGenius.com,
go to our store on the website
and you can purchase one online
or if you'd like some help from our team
then go ahead and message our team help
at itGenius.com or you can just message this page
or message our business page
and our team will be very happy to help out
with some recommendations.
Thanks for watching and thanks to viewers.
Thanks for those of you who tuned in
and said, hi.
And if you have any questions just message them
to this page or pop them below in the comments
and I'll be very happy to answer them.
Take care, cheers.