I don't know my demographics (hell, I don't even have any followers), but I would wager that most anyone who views my site has done so on either a laptop or desktop, probably Windows. I mention that because of what this article is about: the cloud, and cloud computing, specifically... Chromebooks. Now, I'm gonna try to keep my rant to about the cloud itself first, then go into my thoughts on Chromebooks, seeing as that might give context. Or maybe not, I dunno. Again, apologies for the lack of new content recently, I have a music review but it's only the prelude so far, I'm mildly stuck in just not knowing what to do and not having the energy or motivation, but I digress.
I have no idea how the cloud and such came about, but I imagine that what happened was that, we got the internet, right? This thing that can just send from one computer to a server to the next and oh my god amazing! So it occured that we could store data on it, and thus came filesharing, then soon, cloud storage itself. It's a great idea, to be fair. Being able to store something like documents onto the internet, then access them later, especially now with Google Docs and Office 365? Genius! No longer would you need to have a way to transfer, it's just there for you to access, independent of computer, browser, et cetera. It's a great idea and it works, but the problem itself lies within the Internet. Example: Imagine you mostly keep your files, including important stuff, like a work-required report on the cloud. Let's say that this document is due soon, and you have issues with procrastination, but you get on it, with all your ideas, last day or so, but then suddenly... zoop.
...If it wasn't clear, "zoop", means your power went out. Yeah, now you can't work on it (or do anything else on the computer for that matter), but even if it was just your internet that went out, you would still be screwed over! Now, I doubt anyone would be dumb enough to not have it on their computer, but some people are just stupid, man. Another thing is, what if the cloud servers go down? Hopefully, they would also have backups, but if you just so happen to have been dumb enough (or forced) to use a small service that might not, well, you're fucked! This is presuming that it would go down hard enough to lose data, but it could just be unavailable for a long while, which would suck for you and your important business report. The whole "server fuckup" thing can apply to many cases though, not just cloud sites. (YouTube hasn't gone down recently... suspiscious.) Cloud storage is also understandable because it's not like HDDs are the best storage method. They can just break on you sometimes, because like... "hey! fuck you! i'm gonna kill myself and i'm taking your 20 gigabytes of hentai with me!" That's just what they're like. Fucking jealous-ass hard disks. (I can't say much on solid state drives, I've never used nor been able to afford one.) Anyways, admittedly I'm still sidetracked so I might still seem disjointed. (I've been addicted to the Lost Media Wiki for today and yesterday.)
Chromebooks are well... I have a love/hate relationship with them. I've used them a lot and I had one for a bit, so I'll go ahead and say what I think it does right. They're very good if all you want to do is just basic internet stuff, like maybe you have a phone but you hate typing on it and would like to have a larger display. Chromebooks work for that. They're also good for old people who generally don't need to do anything on a computer, but they just need Facebook or something. That's it. Chromebooks are just great for basic internet usage, and they could've just ridden on that! It would've been great! My problem is sort of that Google, with their recent advertising (it all comes down to advertising), keep making it seem like Chromebook is the new god. (Also, they're doing this weird fictional character shit and it's really fucking weird.) I'll be back in a moment as I have to now go look up these advertisements which is hard because, they are probably unlisted, generally making it more of a challenge to do this. oh my god i just went to their youtube channel and the first thing was a chromebook ad that exemplified my problems with it
This does sort of take away my ability to talk about two adverts I get more, but whatever, since they're both condensed into this. Basically, Google is promoting the Chromebook as "a new way to laptop". I want you to think about that. A "new" way... to laptop... that is just a laptop... with less capabilities than like a Windows or Mac laptop or Linux laptop. Their first bragging point is what they deem "the everything button". I hate it already, mainly because of the name. An everything button? It's a fucking search button! It opens up a search bar for you to search shit with! It's a search button! Sure, it can technically find "everything", but it's a fucking search key. I can't say I would stick with a caps-lock button, considering that I pretty much use the shift key nowadays, but I think I find myself screeching LIKE THIS WITH THE CAPS LOCK KEY MORE OFTEN THAN I USE A FUCKING SEARCH BAR BUTTON. (unrelated, can someone explain why the audio for voicelines in trailers and such nowadays sound like they've been stretched? it sounds like a fucking wavetable, it's hard to explain but like... listen to a trailer nowadays and pay attention to what their voices sound like. the fuk?) Their next point is that they have built-in virus protection. Already bullshit! Most computers come with some kind of built-in virus protection, though it doesn't beat a real antivirus, or hell, even Malwarebytes! Most people have an antivirus! They proceed to say "no more of this" while showing a loading cursor on GENERIC-WINDOWS-OS with a bunch of system errors. I hate this the most, because it doesn't make an effort to even be... accurate? to operating systems? Windows doesn't pop up a bunch of errors telling you that you've got a virus. Your antivirus is the one doing the incessant shrieking, I think Windows just takes it up the ass like a champ. They say that, because you can't get viruses on a Chromebook, more peace of mind. I guess this is true, but it's not like this prevents e-mail scams or anything. It's worth noting that, a Chromebook runs Chrome OS which is a modified version of Linux, so quite frankly (and I'm not encouraging this, just so you know), a bunch of malicious but creative people out there could probably find a way to make a virus for Chromebooks. They also aren't that fast. They're faster, yes, but you're still not going to get like high-end performance, which is fair. These shouldn't really be for high-end performance. They're great for basic internet usage, as I said.
The next couple of ads are that fictional character stuff I mentioned earlier. Zaap the Conqueror talks about how she/they can play the latest games with Stadia or GeForce NOW, and mobile games with Google Play. Take this with a grain of salt, I can't say much, but someone mentioned that trying to play Minecraft: Java Edition with even a low render distance was 13 fps. (To be a bit fair, the latest version of Minecraft is generally pretty resource-heavy because of fucking course.) Also, haven't we all already made fun of Stadia? The thing is, I doubt that streaming a game from a PC thousands and thousands of miles away from you would run well at all, especially on a low performance laptop. Worker Bee talks about how you can use Microsoft Office (yes, MICROSOFT OFFICE, NOT GOOGLE'S OWN G-SUITE/G-SPOT) on a Chromebook. I've used the web version of Microsoft Word on a Windows computer and a Chromebook, and generally it's... not that great. But, that's on both of them. Microsoft's web apps do just kinda suck in general. This one isn't that bad, to be fair, some of the text that you don't really focus on is kinda funny. "R&D is currently in the process of developing a tactical plan to steal honey from local bears." That's pretty funny. Very innocent, but funny. Bigfoot talks about his side projects, that he needs to do on a "laptop with all my favorite apps". You know, with such famous and well-loved products as Google Docs, and Ｃ ｌ ｉ ｐ ｃ ｈ ａ ｍ ｐ. This one is also lame in terms of how much to talk about, it's just boring. The line "...so you can see why I'm not out there proving my existence," made me snicker though. Damn Bigfoot, do you need a therapist or something? (Just so you know, these are pretty easy to find if you just look on the official Chromebook channel, where you can watch these ads alongside the totally-not-soulless-corporate-PR-image-based-fuel series, The Adulthood.)
Sorry to cut it short, but I mean this is probably one of the longer things I've wrote and like... I don't know man I'm just bored fuck you. (love you though.)