Chromebook and MS Office

[Puggit]

Our son has some fairly light learning disabilities and is allowed a computer in school. He's not happy with the weight of his Lenovo X230 with battery pack, so we're exploring the option of a Chromebook.

My over-riding concern is that these devices don't run Office - so can anyone tell me what it's like using them for documents. Obviously they do a lot in PPT/Word/Excel at school.

Thanks!

[goforbroke]

The do run office. If you have a subscription to 365, you can install the Android apps for local access, and also connect to your O365 account if you're online. Mine works fine. Its a bit cut down, and not as fully functional as full office on a PC, but it still does what i need it to.

Try it on an Android phone first before you splash out on a chromebook.

[eltawater]

You can use Google docs which takes a good stab at most MS Office document types if you don't have an MS Office 365 subscription.
The biggest issue they have I've found is with Powerpoint presentations, either they're not laid out correctly or they don't animate.

As our school uses Google Classrooms and Google Meet, the integration between those and ChromeOS is rather neat. I can also sign in either child into another Chromebook and all their settings etc are all immediately transferred.

One annoying gotcha is the the use of Google Family Link for child accounts, which aims to restrict their usage and give you as a parent finer control over what the child can do. Unfortunately this also means they block full youtube app and website access, not helpful if your school starts linking to full Youtube videos which aren't available on Youtube kids. The only way around this is to delete the child account and create a full Google account from what I can tell.

If you have an old laptop / desktop lying around, you can give it a go with CloudReady:

https://www.neverware.com/freedownload

They've removed the ability to dual boot in recent versions so be prepared to have a spare drive ready if you want to keep the existing OS installation.

Edited by eltawater on Wednesday 24th March 10:22

[Puggit]

Thanks both - obviously he won't have internet access from his device at school - he'll just need to start documents up to write in.

eltawater said:

One annoying gotcha is the the use of Google Family Link for child accounts, which aims to restrict their usage and give you as a parent finer control over what the child can do. Unfortunately this also means they block full youtube app and website access, not helpful if your school starts linking to full Youtube videos which aren't available on Youtube kids. The only way around this is to delete the child account and create a full Google account from what I can tell.

Familiar with this on the Xbox - as soon as you create a child account some game makers (EA...) block you from playing the game (ie Star Wars which for some reason has a 16 rating). I had to give him full access as a result. Kind of defeats the object of locking things down.

[LeeM135i]

From my experience the main challenge with the Chrome Book is that they are designed to be a connected device, similar to a tablet computer and are not that great offline. They have limited on board storage and processing, most of it is done on the google servers which leaves you needing an internet connection.

Looking for a thin and light windows machine, HP Envy, Dell XPS, Microsoft Surface...... or MacBook Air would probably be your best option depending on budget. Mac will run all day without a charger if you buy a new M1 most 'good' thin and lights will give you 8 hours without a charger. Add a good neoprene case to keep it safe.

Also worth looking at what else your son carries to make his existing machine work all day? I travel a lot (pre & post Covid) for work and found a USBC chargeable laptop solved a lot of the weight problem as you can buy some really compact and light fast chargers (63W). This saves carrying a large heavy brick charger for the laptop and it can be used to charge other devices like phones or tablets.

[Corso Marche]

If they're using O365 in school then best solution is still a Windows laptop. But lightweight Windows laptops get pricey.

So on the Chromebook the best thing to do is use O365 in the browser. The android apps are there, but the best option is still the online version.
MS offer a PWA version of O365 which will run offline in the browser, and will sync to his online account when he connects to WiFi at home in the evening. So no worries about not having WiFi access at school.

Did you look at used MacBook Air's as an option? Also lightweight.

[mmm-five]

If your son is used to the Windows version, then I'd not recommend going to MacOS or Chromebook versions of MS Office, as he'll have to learn a slightly different menu placement, feature set, key commands, etc. (not hugely different, but enough).

I still get frustrated with the slightly different features and menu/toolbars, and I've use both Windows & MacOS versions regularly for over 20 years (usually when switching quickly from one to the other for different clients).

The web/online/sharepoint/teams versions are too feature-limited & clunky for my use, but may be fine for your son's.