My Chromebook journey has led me to the Pixel Slate.
As I wrote here a few months ago, I have wanted to move to a Chromebook for a while and I finally decided to do it.
I started with the Pixelbook, and I have been using it for about three months as my only machine at work. I wrote a bit about what I like about it and what I don’t like about it.
The lack of a biometric login (face or finger recognition) is a real limitation for me with the PixelBook because you have to use your Google login to unlock the device and I’ve got a very strong password on my Google account.
So when the Pixel Slate came out and offered fingerprint login, I bought one. I got it this week and have set it up and started to use it at work.
It’s a really interesting device. I bought it as a Pixelbook replacement as it has a keyboard that turns it into a laptop (sort of). It works a lot like the Microsoft Surface in that regard, although I have never used a Surface so I can’t really compare them.
But the thing that really kind of turned me upside down on the Slate is when I started installing Android apps on it. Once I had the native Gmail, Calendar, and other Android apps on it, the Slate started to feel like a massive phone to me.
So now I am really trying to understand this device and how best to use it.
I am intrigued by the hybrid nature of it, part laptop, part tablet, part phone.
I may very well start taking it with me when I travel, instead of my MacBook Air.
In any case, I am now in full discovery mode with this device. And very excited to see all that it can do for me.
The one thing that took me some time to figure out is the biometric login. If you login to the device with your work Google login, the fingerprint login may not be available to you (that’s what happened to me).
With the help of my colleague Nick, I figured out that I could install the device with my personal Google login, then add my work Google account to it, and then I was able to use the fingerprint login.
I don’t really understand why Google deprecates the fingerprint login for work accounts as they allow that on the Pixel phone.
But in any case, I got all of this working and I am now going to see how far this Pixel Slate can go with me. I am pretty optimistic that I am really going to like it.
