My Chromebook, and Why I Painted It Matte Black

I have my Chromebook for almost half a year now, and I think I can summarise some experience with it.

Software

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It’s super-limited, possibly even more limited than iPad Pro, which I used as my go-to for-work computer for half a year. Well, it depends how you measure the limited thing. E.g. the web apps is unlimited and I would say it’s actually much better than the iPad Pro that I have.

Typing Machine

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The laptop failed to be my general-purpose typing-machine. General purpose, as in ‘type everything’ thing. But I do type my emails and diary from it, and I do it regularly on a daily basis. I’ve written a huge amount of texts with it, and I think its 60 bucks paid themselves many times.

I do enjoy typing my texts from this tiny little machine, and I do enjoy the help of Google Docs, which I set up beautifully to work with the machine. I like it so much, that there’s no other software and hardware combination that can provide me a better experience.

Caveats

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There are some things I just hate.

1. First, it’s not like any MacBook regarding sleep. First weeks, I did this common mistake of just closing my lid and picking up the laptop later, to find out its battery was depleted. Later, I realised I mostly use the laptop at evenings, so I started turning it off before sleep and turning it on before my night writing sessions.

2. Second, when you turn on your laptop, it asks for your password. Google password. That’s expected, considering the laptop gives you full access to your Google Account. But it’s still stupid, because my Google password is 128 symbols generated gibberish combination of numbers, letters, and special symbols. Don’t ask! I made it so because I can. Entering this password each and every time is just unreasonable. So I was forced to change my password to a relatively short (20 symbols) and type-easy (guess-easy) password.

   Later, I found out, that by enabling some developer version thing in the settings, I was able to add a 6 numbers pin, which allowed me to enter my laptop. Also, I added my bluetooth smart watch (not Apple Watch this time, but I guess that could work too), which allows me to unlock my laptop very easily, by bringing my left smartwatch hand to the screen very closely. It doesn’t work from the distance! How cool is that!

   While all that feels very futuristic and cool, there’s this disastorous UX-bug: it works only after you entered your master (Google Account) password. So, at least once per evening, I have to enter that horrible password of mine. (Which I was forced to change eventually.) If I’m leaving my laptop — which mostly never happens anyway, as I open it, type things for an hour or two, turn it off and go sleeping — so, again, if I’m leaving it, yeah, I can come back and unlock with either pin-code or my smartwatch.

   • That protects my wee-time from being nervous my partner Nick or my mom, or whoever is I’m sharing the apartment with at the time, won’t jump to my laptop and unlock it. (That was sarcasm, just in case you didn’t notice.)

3. Third, I cannot stand how ugly it is. After years on MacBooks (Pros and Airs), after many years being too picky with the computer keyboards, mice, other peripherals, I just cannot stand the ugly hardware. It’s ugly. (For me.)

I want to stress just one thing out of all this: the keyboard is great. I love this keyboard, and for me it’s the same great typing experience as my other MacBooksand my iPad Pro. On one hand, the keyboard is the only thing that I need from that little fella. On the other hand, I’m constantly irritated by the rest of the laptop. The screen quality (shit), the hinges (dung), the plastic (crap), the charger (rubbish), the battery life while sleeping (garbage). Even the colours! It’s not a MacBook Air, it’s not! It’s just not. Don’t expect to buy a MacBook Air for sixty bucks.

That’s how it looked:

I decided I can change at least one part of all this crapperry crap: I can re-paint it!

So, here we are. My friend Nick helped me organise this crazy idea, and we pictured all the process, and even took a professional DSLR camera to make it a funny way to try to improve the laptop.

Here is the result:

[Photos and videos are to be added. While I’m migrating to a new blog engine, I’m willing to re-edit the video we did back then.]

Conclusion

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While it looks cool, again, unfortunately, it worked even worse. Turned out, it’s a bit more difficult to reliably paint the glossy plastic body of the device. I did not sandpaper it, all I had was some primer layer before the paint. It worked for a while, but over time, the paint started to fail off the keys, and the laptop become even uglier.

Later, I’ve fixed it by commiting into another project. We made a fabric case for the laptop, trying to mimic the Surface Pro keyboard feel. I succeded in it (as in feel part), but it looked much less professional than the Surface Pro. For obvious reasons.

I’ve wrote about it in my final story about the Chromebook, named My Chromebook Has Died. Reviewing Its Life.