Rough Cuts Ltd Blog

I've used Apple Macs for 8 years now, my first was a 2008 MacBook pro 15" which, by comparison to it's windows equivalent was light years ahead. You see Windows was using Vista, and it was a car crash of an Operating System. I had one, I used it for 28 days, and used system restore, more times in the time I had it, than I'd used on my XP machine I was replacing. Fortunately Tesco were great and refunded it for me as faulty. Which was the best way to describe it. I bit the bullet, and without first hand experience, I forked out 4 times the amount I'd spent on my Vaio for the Mac. And I loved it, I became an advocate. I could name several people, who, from my enthusiasm went out and bought Mac's themselves. But time moves on, and so does technology. Wireless streaming is no longer for the Bill Gates of this world, we all expect it. Music, everywhere. Films, all over. DLNA should be commonplace... but one Manufacturer is out of the game. Because they have their

So today I had my first experience with a google chromebook, 12 actually, networked. Initially I was impressed. Being OS light, they were quick responsive and pretty intuitive. Then I came to printing. Printing, something so rudimentarily simple, that it should have taken moments. Alas, no. You see, Chromeboxes don't install printers. No drivers, no messy installation. Because, well. They don't work. Now this wasn't a £30 printer, this is one of the schools £500 canon laser printer, a worthy investment. But to be blunt. It was rendered pretty much worthless. After hunting round for an hour or so for a USB lead, I plugged it directly into the Chromebox. Although the OS detected the Printer, with no drivers to install, it was a pointless effort. Chrome found no apps that were compatible. So it wouldn't work. After further investigation, I found in order to make this printer work, I would need to plug it into a windows machine and share it. Use the windows PC to act as