OK... back to the first impression...
The machine arrived this afternoon, which was really a surprise because I only received a ship notice 3 hours before FedEx showed up at my door! Good thing I was home, because it needed to be signed for and I didn't relish a drive out to the nearest FedEx overnight ship terminal (Alexandria, VA!).
The cat was, of course, very interested in the box. He loves technology, and remains a die-hard iPad fan because it responds to his paws as well as my hands.
Once I opened the box, the directions were right there for me to find... Except they were in Braille! A friend helped me find this: Braille Translator site once I connected the Chromebook to the Internet.
Good thing I found English and German directions right under it (and Spanish, French, along with several other languages!). It turned out that I didn't need them though...
I took the machine out of the box and was very surprised at how light it was. I actually think its lighter than my iPad with its protective case. Its certainly lighter than my Sony Vaio S series (I love it, BTW) which weighs about 6 pounds with the add-on battery. The downside is that the machine feels more fragile, and I'm a little worried about how it will hold up in my classroom. Most of my students aren't unnecessarily rough with anything, and we often use my iPad without its protective case (I have to take the case off to hook the iPad to our interactive whiteboard; the dongle doesn't fit with the case on) to play group games or practice in my social skills class. But, we have had a few accidents this year which have involved a broken digital camera and a dropped whiteboard stylus.
The Chromebook does not have a port that will allow me to hook it to the whiteboard in the classroom.
I tried out Chromevox, and was fairly pleased with it. Mind now, I'm not blind, and I have no reading disability. I'll have to ask some students to try out the feature and see if they also find it acceptable. I am thinking they might not because it reads EVERYTHING, including hyphens and "end parenthesis". However, I will leave it up to them to decide. I don't think it will be too hard to get them to use it, because they generally like anything new and shiny.
I have discovered that PowerPoint slides don't transfer as well to Google Drive, but I'll explore a bit more and see if that improves.
The battery life is advertised at 6 hours, which isn't bad for a laptop, although my Sony is 14 hours with the sheet battery, and 5-7 hours without depending on the settings. The battery life may have something to do with the screen. The screen resolution, frankly, was amazing. It is REALLY sharp. Again, sharper than my Sony. I didn't realize that the screen resolutions had advanced so much in the 2 years I'd owned my Sony.
I believe the Chromebook will fit in the old iPad zippercase I have, which is nice. The only reason I don't bring my laptop to school with me more often is because I am not supposed to lift more than 15 pounds: the backpack with the laptop (6 pounds with the sheet battery, give or take a pound), plus the iPad and assorted school supplies is over 15 pounds. And the wheeled backpack I bought is a pain in the rear. Yes, I bring the iPad to school with the laptop because in my team classes, one of my jobs is to make a set of notes for students who have trouble copying from the board. I can stand in the classroom or move around with the iPad, and cannot do that with the laptop. However, I can't access the school grading system (web based) or our IEP writing system on the iPad. I will be testing those out; allegedly both work in Chrome because the district installed that on the desktop machines just after winter break.
As a side note, I wasn't able to find a Skype client for the Chromebook, and I already know that the Red Cross web-based applications won't work in Chrome. I've been told the latter by other Red Cross volunteers. I'm hoping there is a Skype client, because I use that regularly for another group I volunteer with.
For now, this is enough...
