Cloud Productivity And Revisiting Chromebooks in 2019

In the last 6 months, my 2018 Macbook Pro has suffered two hardware failures, the screen developed fine lines across the top and the "e" key has literally worn away; you can see the backlight through it!  So today, I am visiting the Apple store to see what can be done.

So, what to do for a professional and personal device in the interim?

Yesterday, my Google Pixelbook arrived complete with Google Pen! This is my first use of a Chromebook since 2012 and all I can say is WOW!

The original Chromebooks were both cheap and simply a web browser-based OS in a laptop form; my new Chromebook is a million miles from that first implementation.

Firstly, the core OS, web browser and web-apps experience is vastly improved, but secondly, and more importantly, I can run Android applications. This is a killer feature and opens up a whole world of apps to me.

The Android apps work offline (as do many web apps now), they are perfect for when I fold the screen back and go in to tablet mode and they run as windowed apps with both touch and pointer input.

The pen is super responsive and, although the apps that support it fully are limited, the apps that work are amazing... Autodesk Sketchbook is both free and has high-end functions.

For those that know me, you'll know I am the biggest fan of G-Suite, I love the born in the web productivity suite and, from my personal experience of deploying cloud office solutions to over 80,000 people globally, across both Office 365 and GSuite, I see that GSuite drives transformation and collaboration. It’s not that I don’t recommend O365, every organisation has different needs, but I find that GSuite drives change and changes in how people work, O365 is too familiar to drive change. This isn’t just my personal opinion, I have the raw stats to show how the different platforms drive different levels of change... the key metric being how many user-months are needed to get to 1m documents in the cloud? (user-months = number of users * number of months deployed)

In a recent GSuite deployment I hit 1m cloud documents in 18,000 user/months. In a slightly more recent O365 deployment, we delivered 1,008,000 user/months and still did not hit 1M documents in the cloud… the email attachment still ruled, mostly due to the familiarity of Outlook perpetuating 20 years of working practices. My advice for O365 deployments that need to drive transformation would be NOT to deploy Outlook and push people to the web app!

The two use cases above are slightly skewed by training, in the GSuite project, everyone had a day of training class-based, in the O365 deployment, it was a teach-yourself approach with online web-based training modules.

The results, despite being slightly different in approach, show why I favour GSuite as a tool for transformation! The results also show the importance of training. GSuite or O365 comes naturally to the IT crowd, but not to the P.A.’s or the people working at the coalface of the organisation. My biggest tip for a cloud productivity deployment, irrespective of the flavour you choose, is getting the P.A.’s on your side!

Hitting the 1m documents has a financial benefit, this can be used to justify the training! In the GSuite deployment, once people had been trained, they voluntarily closed down their network drives! The cost of network storage refresh, backup and DR, for the Financial Director, should be the mandate for training!

My company and my family all use GSuite, we have done since 2011 and it’s a core part of how we run our personal and professional lives, my children have grown up with it; have you ever had a family GSuite conversation at the dinner table, we have!

This brings me back to my new Chromebook. My data migration was very easy, I logged in to the Chromebook for the first time and there were all my documents, all ready to go! Thankfully, I had Google Drive installed on my Mac, so migration of files was never a concern. But what about all those Word, Pages, Powerpoint and Keynote documents?

ChromeOS and GSuite have coped with these document formats very well for a number of years, and I rarely worry about compatibility, but the offline use case for these is a concern. I installed the Android apps for the MS products and I have not had an issue, they work amazingly well… yes, I know some features will be missing, but mostly features I never use… time will tell!

Access to my Apple apps has been resolved with the iCloud Chrome plug-in and adding the iCloud web launchpad as a shortcut. Once again, the features are not 100%, but they are good enough!

The biggest file compatibility issue I have experienced is when a spreadsheet contains GSuite native cloud features, such as realtime data and currency etc.

My Chromebook now has a clear differentiation between web apps and Android apps, this means I choose my app depending on the situation I find myself, but a common cloud filestore with offline/online sync fixes this without issue or intervention.

The Google Pixelbook with the convertible form factor, web and Android apps, touch screen and ChromeOS is a truely usable replacement for my Mac… but, what would I miss?

Mac Affinity Designer is probably my most used native Mac app and will cause me to revert to my Mac when needed. Additionally, if I wanted to do a killer presentation, native Apple Keynote wins every time. From a more personal perspective, iMessage on the desktop will be missed and more importantly, those Minecraft server games with my sons will be a family loss (the Android version of Minecraft cannot connect to the same servers!).

A big plus to the Chromebook is that all my family can use it and logon with their family GSuite username and password, with all files instantly synced; this is a big plus! The second big plus is Google assistant on Chromebook, it works, just like having a Google speaker next to me at all time… “Hey Google, what’s the weather today?”, “Hey, Google launch Radio Jackie on TuneIn”, “Hey Google, play 80’s electro-pop”.. This probably reveals far too much about me, but it has become 2nd nature for me to talk to my Chromebook! This is where Apple and Microsoft have failed as they try hard to play voice catchup! The only other seamless implementation I have seen is the Alexa and Fire Tablet, it just works as you expect it should.

The only fly in Google Assistant’s ointment is the lack of GSuite integration, when I ask “Hey Google, what is in my calendar”, she responds with the fact that she can’t tell me but she is also “learning new things every day”... this has been her response for the last 3 years! Come on Google!

Will I stick with the Google Pixelbook? Yes, definitely, I love it and how it works, it’s different, but in a good way… My (repaired) Mac could be relegated to workstation status in my office and with remote login capability (RealVNC is a favourite), my access to Mac killer apps should not be a problem! The hardware, battery life, the apps and the tablet mode all make my Google Pixelbook a pleasure to work with which I don’t want to give up!

The acid test for the Google Pixelbook is always my sons, aged 11 and 14 and growing up in my tech-savvy household, they are tech critics in the extreme. The ultimate praise, they have Macbook Airs, but suddenly, Chromebooks are on their Chrismas list!

#chromebooks #chromebook #GSuite #Office365 #Android #Mac

This article is not affiliated to any provider of cloud services or product and all views expressed here are those of the author.