Five powerful features of Chromebook

While laptops with Google's Chrome OS system are cheap and easy to use, many consumers still have a lot of misgivings about Chromebook notebooks. They will think that Chromebook cannot run Photoshop and office, which can cause a lot of inconvenience to their work and life. In fact, the idea is wrong, today we give you Chromebook five powerful features, whether it is Photoshop or office, they can easily handle.

　　1. Modify pictures through Adobe Photoshop

Adobe and Google recently announced that they will jointly develop online Photoshop tools that support Chromebook. This means that Photoshop tools are available not only for Chrome OS, but also for Chrome browsers in Linux systems. The Windows version of the Chrome browser can even sync the processed images to the Chrome OS's Chrome browser via Adobe's server.

Although this may sound a bit complicated (assuming that it must be networked), it is important for Chromebook users who need to use Photoshop. Although the online tools are limited in functionality, the battery and processor load on the Chromebook notebook is not too heavy because a lot of data processing work is done with Adobe servers. In addition, Photoshop will also be integrated with Google Drive, you can easily save the processed files to the cloud server.

Currently, this feature is still in beta and is limited to Adobe Education Cloud paid users in North America. But I believe it will be open to all Chromebook users in the near future.

　2. Using Microsoft Office

Microsoft has not developed a dedicated Office application for Chromebook users, which is an indisputable real-time. But unless you are a professional accountant, you may not be able to use many of the complex tools and calculations in your office for a lifetime.

Microsoft currently offers a completely free web of online Office tools, namely, Word online, Excel online, and PowerPoint on-line. Microsoft has even added the three online tools to the Chrome Web store. While these tools are not just for Chromebook users, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS users can be used online for free.

If you're not satisfied with your previous Office Web app, now is the time to try some new options, and Microsoft has redesigned its own online Office tool. Office Online does not provide any offline functionality compared to Google Docs, which is a disadvantage. But it does have a more familiar interface and better compatibility with Microsoft Office documents. In addition, users can save online documents to the OneDrive cloud server and continue to access or edit them on any Windows or Mac desktop device.

　　3, running the Android application

Google is trying to get all Android apps to run on Chrome OS, and recently four well-known Android apps have been added to the Chrome OS platform. In addition, many hackers are starting to make changes to a variety of Android apps and have found a common way to make any Android app run on Chrome OS. Yes, that means we can now use Skype on the Chromebook.

Everything is getting easier, now you can quickly convert Android apps to Chrome OS packages via Archon package, or the direct chrome plugin supports extracting APK installation files. And this feature is likely to continue to improve, and eventually all Android apps can be perfectly run on Chrome OS. In the future, Chromebook will be another arena to play the glamour of Android apps.

4. Off-line use

Yes, now Chromebook can also be used offline, in the offline case, we can also read Gmail mail, check the Google Calendar or edit the document in Google Drive.

In addition to these basic operations, we can even download Kindle e-books, video, music, and offline viewing of PDF documents. Also use the Chrome app to edit the to-do list locally like wunderlist or any.do. You can even buy movies and TV dramas from the Google Play store offline to download and watch. If you are just trying to kill time, you can play games offline for a little while.

Of course, a lot of things still need to be used online, but now Chromebook has got rid of the restrictions that cannot be used offline. At this point, the Chrome OS is already in the same state as Windows or Linux.

However, this feature currently supports only the latest beta version of Chrome 39, and if used in other versions of Chrome, it still gets the "Can't connect to Web page" hint.

　5, the complete desktop operating system

This last feature is not suitable for beginners, nor for users unfamiliar with Chromebook. But this feature will almost make Chrome OS, like Windows, Linux, a complete desktop experience, really attractive.

Switching the system to developer mode (which is now available in the system, which requires a physical switch), allows us to fully access the interior of the Chrome OS system. You can then install a complete Linux desktop system (such as Ubuntu) into the Chrome OS. After switching to Linux, you can use it like a normal desktop system, install applications, and so on.

In a better situation, after installing steam for Linux, as long as it is an Intel processor based device, you can participate in the steam online streaming gaming service, running games on Chromebook that are usually only run on PCs. We can also install Microsoft desktop apps like Minecraft and Skype for Linux. Yes, Skype now supports Linux and does not support Chrome OS.

How, as time goes on, Chromebook users will be less constrained. such as Photoshop, Office, and a variety of Android apps can be implemented on Chrome OS. If Google and developers support Chrome OS more in the future, the future Chromebook will become more and more powerful and play a more important role in our life.