Chromebooks are capable machines, but they are not yet suitable for business use

Feb 6, 2014 14:33 GMT  ·  By

Chromebooks are stealing a lot of the spotlight recently, enough for tech giants like Microsoft to get annoyed and try to bash the laptops in a couple of anti-Chromebook videos.

So the question arises, will everybody be owning a Chromebook soon? That’s quite unlikely, says Forbes. Even with blossoming sales and happy customers everywhere, making it in the business market won’t be an easy endeavor for these notebooks.

The first reason given to sediment the theory is that even though users can run Microsoft Web apps on their Chromebooks which enable basic editing features, enterprise users will often be in need of advanced features (like change-tracking).

So mobile professionals won’t be able to work on a PowerPoint slide they have to present shorty after they get off the plane.

Another issue with Chromebooks is they don’t support virtual-conference apps like WebEx or Skype which are so important to business users these days. Google’s video conference service or Hangouts might be an answer to the problem, but the latter platform is not really suited for business use.

How about the one of the most basic activities performed in every business, namely printing? Sadly, Chromebooks will unnecessarily complicate this mundane task, because in order to do so the printer must be web connected via Google Cloud Print.

Last but not least, we should mention legacy applications. Keeping in mind that every business has its own set of specialized applications, the question if Chromebooks were able to run them.

It’s not impossible, but users will have to use a remote desktop application to use legacy software. Most of the apps from this category still run on Microsoft Windows and things aren’t going to change any time soon.

True, new business solutions concentrate on building apps designed with cloud computing in mind and can interact with the user via a browser of an application, but it will take a while until this practice becomes main stream. In the meantime, deploying Chromebooks in the business environment will only bring along large expenses.