Chrome Remote is no longer beta

It still performs like a beta and Google still lists it as a beta. It still can’t handle multiple displays for any platform and doesn’t do sound at all for Mac Chrome. When I use other Remote Desktop software, it works as expected. I’ve used Chrome Remote Desktop on many different setups including Win XP, Win 7 and Mac OS and it’s been increasingly sketchy to use. Won’t connect with errors that cannot be resolved… Will connect, but cannot see the cursor, etc. — It’s just not the performance I expect as a professional. For example, LogMeIn simply works every time on all platforms that I’ve used it over the years.

I presume you are aware that Chrome Remote is no longer beta. I have used Chrome Remote for a while, and it works well for me. There is also an installable service for Windows and Macs which allows you to connect without someone at the other end to pass you a pass number.

http://support.google.com/chromeos/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1056447

But some users will still need access to Windows applications, especially it they want to use the Chromebook for work.  But there are solutions for that.  Ericom AccessNow is an HTML5 RDP client that enables Chromebook users to securely connect to any RDP host, including Terminal Server and VDI virtual desktops, and run their applications and desktops in a browser.

AccessNow does not require any client to be installed on the Chromebook, as you only need the HTML5-compatible browser.  So this fits the Chromebook model of reducing IT support costs.

Check out this link for more info:
http://www.ericom.com/RDPChromebook.asp?URL_ID=708

And yes, I work for Ericom

PS: once you boot Win8 into the desktop by default, most power users like yourself are quite happy with it.

They are certainly not beta … The CRUD you know and love and are talking about is Windows.

What the?  I think you misread just about everything I said above.  I clearly referred to Chrome Remote Desktop Beta (with a link to it I provided above nonetheless) and said nothing against Chrome OS. And, Chrome Remote Desktop certainly IS in beta according to Google.  You know, the people that made the thing?

And it certainly performs like a beta if you actually attempt to use it professionally (as I have) in various professional setups over the years.

Windows fanboys like yourself

What the?  I’m typing this from a MacBook Pro with Mac OS X, boy.  I’ve also professionally used Chrome with Google Docs (Drive), etc. since its inception which is basically the Chrome OS, along with Windows XP/7 and sometimes Linux.  M’kay, boy?

The CRUD you know and love and are talking about is Windows. Windows fanboys like yourself assume that because Windows behaves in that way, every other OS must as well. That is simply not the case. 

If you want to run tax or accounts applications on a light portable device which you carry around with you, Chromebooks are the best option if you value your data and don’t want to lose your accounts or have them stolen.

You get 16GB fast SSD plus 100GB cloud free storage with the $249 ARM Samsung Chromebook 3, and for $50 you can add another 64GB of SSD in an SD card to take local SSD storage  to 80GB. Surely you are not suggesting that you need more local storage on a cloud computer than on a high end Apple Macbook Air?

You will find it very difficult to fill up the 16GB SSD on a Chromebook. First Chromebooks don’t use local storage – that is just for downloads and uploads. Then you don’t need to allow for OS and bloat as you do with Windows, as you can’t install local applications, drivers, or OS components on a Chromebook, and so the space required by the OS never grows.

If you run a business, school, library etc. Windows laptops cost you three times as much in total cost of ownership than Chromebooks. This cost difference is mainly on IT staff wages you have to pay for provisioning, maintaining, and supporting Windows desktops and server authentication. With Chromebooks you can manage with very few or none, and user productivity also increases as a result of reduction in user maintenance requirements. These are real figures produced by schools, libraries etc. that implemented large scale Chromebook an Windows laptop deployments. The reason why the Chromebooks have such a low cost of ownership is because nowadays, the cost of computer hardware is dirt cheap nowadays, but the cost of labour is sky high, and Windows require a very high labour overhead compared to Chromebooks which are Zero Maintenance, Zero Touch devices. 

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

Lenovo AMD E300              passmark 674

Acer C7 Chromebook – Intel Celeron 847     passmark  1016

Samsung Chromebook 550 – Intel Celeron 867     passmark 1271

Samsung Chromebook 3 – ARM A-15        passmark 739 (estimated from a basket of CPU benchmarks).

The Samsung Chromebook 3 and Samsung Chromebook 550 also have SSD drives as found on high end ultrabooks and these are twice as fast as the slow mechanical hard drives found on the Acer C7, $300 Lenovo.

So basically you are paying $50 extra than the ARM Samsung Chromebook 3, and $100 more than the Acer C7 Chromebook for a slower computer, and it will run even slower than that suggests because it is running a bloated Windows operating system on it. Not really a good deal at all.

* The netbooks I tried back in 2009 now all look pretty bad compared to this, in terms of things like battery life, responsiveness and even keyboard layout. And by virtue of running Windows, they required more effort in terms of setup, maintenance and backup.

* If you see the Chromebook as a machine that takes a place of a general-purpose computer, your critique is valid. It’s a less functional device that is closed in some important ways. But if you see it, as I do, primarily as an addition to the current computing ecosystem–and makes the open platform of the Web more accessible to more people–it seems a reasonable trade-off. 

(Cory Doctorow, whose opinions on DRM I respect a lot, may feel different. Were he to show up in this thread to say so, I would feel chastened and flattered at the same time.) 

- RP