A ‘Chromebook’ is the name given to a new type of laptop produced by Google which looks much like any other laptop, except that they are powered by Google’s own Chrome Operating System. These Acer and Samsung machines are geared towards being used exclusively on the web and therefore have no desktop or file system or any of the normal stuff you expect from a computer as instead the entire machine is basically designed as a web surfing machine.
This means that for starters it is very quick to turn on (about 8 seconds apparently), all your emails, documents, photos and videos etc. are all stored and can be used online, doesn’t need to be updated or patched as this happens automatically and it comes with an unlimited hard drive (i.e. the entire internet). You can find new apps and games using Chrome store just like you do with Chrome currently and as everything is stored online, if you accidently drop your ‘Chromebook’ in a shark tank you can just pick up a new Chromebook, log on and pick up where you left off.
So what does this mean for your online business?
More Customers!
If these take off then they will make it a great deal easier and cheaper for many more people to get online and have the opportunity to have dealings with your business and hopefully, your payment service provider. What ‘Chromebooks’ and their inevitable copycat devices will have in common is that they don’t need to come loaded with large hard drives or require a slew of program software and anti-virus to work. As everything is done online the machines will be quite simple and therefore much cheaper. Cheaper and easier to get online + more and more services available online = good for your business = more payment processing and more profit.
Nothing Immediately
What Google certainly appreciates is that this is a big step forward and may take a bit of time for lots of people to adopt. The advantages are clear but what will stop people from jumping on board straight away is the psychological awkwardness people will feel about saving all their data online, not having a desktop to work from or those friendly icons looking back at you (even though they are normally hidden by a browser). Also, many are fearful that uploading all your data to the cloud places a lot of faith in Google in terms of data security.
Only time will tell how successful this new way of computing will be in the long run. Would you be happy using a Chromebook?
