I am not ashamed to admit it. In fact, I’m a little proud of it. I owned an Apple Newton, a message pad introduced by Apple Computer in 1993. It resembled steno pad with a flip top, a stylus and a sizable screen on which to handwrite. However, the handwriting recognition was far from perfect. The Doonesbury cartoon relentlessly satirized the flawed handwriting recognition (e.g., “I am writing a test sentence” became “Iran is riding a taste sensation.”) Nevertheless, nothing like it had been on the market—it would be three years until the Palm Pilot would first appear.

    The Newton was a revolutionary flop. Upon Jobs return to Apple, the Newton was eliminated. As for my Newton, it met a similar fate. One night, I left it atop my car, and after reaching 55 MPH on the Interstate, it went airborne, landed on the highway and survived until I accidentally backed over it. 

    Last month Google released what I suppose is the first ever cloud laptop, the Chromebook. Stated simply, it’s a laptop that only runs a web browser (Chrome). If you’re a cloud purist (e.g., you do everything on the Internet and need nothing actually stored on your physical computer),then  June 15th, the release date of the Chromebook, was a red letter day. I was both excited and intrigued.

    The Chromebook boasts a blazingly fast boot up time, instantaneous resume from sleep, and almost no need for local data storage whatsoever. And, Google says, if you lose it or break it, no problem, all your data is in the cloud, so just get another one and you’re ready to go. No reinstallation needed. It also boasts security by way of “sandboxing”, which means that each browser runs in its own memory space (sandbox) and can’t access other browsers. If you navigate to a site riddled with malware, it cannot affect the other browsers.

    Ironically, Microsoft’s cloud offering, Office365, makes the Chromebook even more compelling because you can run cloud version of the Office suite.

    Chromebook is for the cloud purist. I like a purist, but I’m not sure I want to be one. Personally, I like “both and.” I want cloud convenience and offline capability. I’d like my laptop to function on an airplane without having to pay for Wi-Fi. I like my data everywhere and the richness of a Windows application like Outlook. Although the Chromebook boasts everywhere access to the Internet, smartphones can’t even do that 100% of the time and without the Internet, the Chromebook is a rectangle Frisbee.

    Cloud security is another concern for the Chromebook. Your personal data, documents, emails, pictures, tweets, status updates, etc., exist on someone else’s computer. It’s inherently insecure. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Yes, we can safely bank online and the front door (browser access) is secure. The back end often is not. What do the United States Senate, CIA.gov, Citigroup, the International Monetary Fund, Lockheed Martin, Gmail, Sony Pictures, PlayStation, and Nintendo have in common? All were recently breached, compromised, hacked, and that’s only a small fraction of the high profile targets that have been compromised.

    Lastly, the price. The Chromebook is a laptop with only one application, a browser, which is a fraction of a normal laptop, but the price is close to that of a full functioning laptop (which, don’t forget, can still access all of the cloud). And while the Chromebook will be more of a success than the Newton, it’s still an idea that’s slightly ahead of its time. Hopefully, I won’t run over it.

    Bott Technology Solutions helps small to midsize businesses with computer technology needs. Greg may be reached via e-mail at gregbott@bottinc.com or at 601-207-0509.Greg’s professional experience includes consulting for Price Waterhouse, working as a Program Manager for Microsoft Corporation, and serving as Chief Technology Officer for several companies. He has a Masters in Software Engineering from the University of Texas and has presented at technical conferences across the world.