Understanding What Chromebooks Do... And Don't Do

Chromebooks are excellent devices for those who need an easy-to-use and inexpensive devices to access Moodle and G Suite. Before selecting one as your primary device for studies, remember these points:

• Chromebooks function best when they are connected to a wifi network
• One cannot install applications (such as Word, Excel Access, PowerPoint, Access or any Adobe products) on a Chromebook

A Chromebook is an Internet-only notebook computer. To get full use of its features, it must be connected to the Internet (for example through GCC's guest wifi) and the user must be logged on to G Suite (for example using your "stuemail" account provided by GCC.

Because there is no computing capacity on the device, all files must be created using and stored on a cloud computing platform. G Suite is the most widely-used, but there are other sites that provide services G Suite does not.  This fact make Chromebooks simple and fast, but it does restrict what one can do with one.

GCC students may find they are unable to use some of the software used in classes at GCC on a Chromebook. This includes software used to solve problems in some math and science courses, the creative suites used in some art classes, and software used for business and computer information science courses. For other courses, where students need access to the internet (to access the full text databases available though the Nahman-Watson Library) and to word processing and presentation software, a Chromebook may be perfectly useful.