What can you do with a Chrome notebook? I found a few ways to test it out this afternoon without even straining!
Dinner
The natives became restless. Lives were at stake! What could I do? Where could I turn? Fortunately, I was able to grab my CR-48 and use it to save the day. This thing is seriously on and ready for use in just a few seconds. So, I signed in and headed to the website for Papa John’s Pizza (they have a deal here on Mondays). I thought, why not try out the online order site and make sure it works! Surely, at least some of my readers love pizza! True to my expectations, there were no issues at all with ordering. I was able to craft my pizzas using their flash-based tool and place the order for pick-up.
Weather
We have just had a rough time here lately as far as storms. Every other day seems to bring a new tempest. As we were eating our pizza our lights flickered a few times. What to do? Grab the CR-48, of course! I fired up the local weather station’s animated radar to see what was afoot. Looks like we were soon to be in the clear!
Entertainment
Of course, eating and worrying about the weather do not a happy human make. We need a bit of fun! So, I thought, why not check out some of my favorite sites? The first one I tired was vNES, which is a site that allows you (legally) to play old Nintendo Entertainment System games online via a Java emulator applet. My CR-48 doesn’t seem to have Java, so that didn’t work at all. Next, I tested out YouTube. YouTube works with no issues at all, as one would indeed expect. There was a bit of occasional slowdown, but I can forgive that. After all that, I played around with some of the apps available for installation. I found Super Mario Bros. Crossover and spent a fair bit of time playing as each character. It offered to take me to a newer version online, and I soon found that the newer version worked just fine as well.
http://www.virtualnes.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
Super Mario Bros. Crossover (Chrome Webstore) (link seems to be unavailable now…try searching for it in the webstore)
Verdict
I was able to arrange for dinner, have some peace of mind with regard to the weather, and play some games and videos for a bit of light diversion using my CR-48. I did not once have to worry about the battery dying, which was nice considering that I have not had such a luxury with my main laptop. The fact that this notebook was on and ready at my beck and call almost instantly was a very nice touch. This little notebook (oh, did I mention I’m blogging on it right now too? ;)) was a winner for sure tonight!
I’ll post the promised unpacking photos soon. In addition, I’ll be testing my son’s homeschool site’s flash-based curriculum in this coming week.