Well Hello! I am Budhaditya the Tech Guy, And I am here to demonstrate briefly about the new revolutionary Asus Chrome Box, and state my reasons on why it failed to impress me.
Well, You might say I am a complete moron to tell this product not good, but I will give you my reasons,
But first, I am gonna give whats good about it.
Well, just looking at it, anybody can say that this is small. In reality, It will just fit on your palms, Its light, and it still contains a whole nearly desktop level hardware. It contains a 16 GB SSD which means it runs crazy fast, CPU varies on different products on different prices, that is, it has celeron, i3, and i7 processors. And the price ascends respectively. DDR3 Memory from 2 - 4 GB with 2 DIMM Slots. Intel HD Graphics of 4000 or 4400, with a power requirement of 65 Watts which will be available from the adapter supplied from the vendor. And the OS - It runs on Chrome OS.
All USBs are USB 3 And what is more interesting is, it has passive cooling, means no fans, And it doesn't heats up also.
Now It is cool with a user who would just surf the internet, write some documents, take it to office for presentations, But coming on a little higher level, that is a hot blooded home user, Chromebox doesn't suffice.
The main problem with this device, that it holds a middle position of both a portable and a non portable device. Which means you can use some of it's features as both, Some of aspects not.As I said, It also has an i7 varient, which means its a both costly and performance device, But in another hand it has an OS which is very limited.
For 1 brief review, Its like using a very costly, advanced, performer android phone which doesn't have a touch interface, Doesn't have a battery, a display, and in one word, Un-usable at complete portability conditions. On another side, It has a desktop like setup, where there is a lite Operating System installed i.e Chrome OS, which is based on linux but is mainly a web application system. Very Light. Also feels like running blue stacks or Virtual Android Machine on a very hi-def PC.
Now whats the use of using a Lite Chrome OS on an i7 Architecture? Is not this an over kill? Plus You basically can't do anything except than word processing, surfing, youtube and all. Android store, Android Apps not supported (TILL NOW) , Windows Applications Not Supported (TILL NOW) , No external devices can be installed, Specially the once with driver packs, because Drivers cannot be installed, Which also means you can't connect an advanced USB WiFi adapter to it. (It has wifi, But an adapter is needed for a few things). Only option is chrome store, Which is still new, and not very versatile.
Everything I just said is for a regular computer lover user. For geeks, Nothing is impossible. Chorme OS will support android Apps soon. With Developer mode, Complete OS Change, Running Pure Linux, Installing Drivers, and Almost everything possible with a desktop PC is possible. But it wont be a typical ChromeBox any more. ChromeBox is very very limited.
Final Comments : If you are yourself a super lite user, who can work with a lite web based system, Chromebox is Good,
If you are a computer lover but not a geek, who bought this by its looks, performance, portability and a different OS experience, You will find this device super boring.
And If you are a geek, Who can alter ChromeBox to a Pandora's Box, Its also a good go.
But, as I said, Of you are looking for a review on "How CHROMEBOX is? I wanna Use it." I would just say - Boring.
THANK YOU
T
