Blogging from the Chromebook

In response to You Can Blog on It, Right?:

Yes, absolutely.  About half of everything I write these days is done on the Chromebook.  It’s had no problem loading WordPress or any other blogging back-end I’ve encountered.  It also handles social media pages well, including every Twitter or Facebook app for Chrome that I’ve tested.

There are plenty of Chrome apps you can use to capture images and prepare them for a blog post.  I’ve been using one called Pixlr.  I like it well enough to use it on my main PC as well.  

For word processing other than blogging, I’m generally happy with Google Docs, which does a nice job of putting the word processing features 90% of users are interested in front and center.  It has an offline mode too, if you want to grab some documents into local storage before heading someplace that you won’t have wifi.  Chromebooks also come with a dozen free passes for in-flight wifi; I used one of them to write a blog post from 35,000 feet a couple of weeks ago.  If Google Docs isn’t your thing, there are several other Chrome word processing apps out there, plus other office apps like spreadsheets.

I have a small wireless mouse I often use with my Chromebook, but it has an excellent built-in touchpad that has worked quite well for blogging.  It’s a little different than most notebook touchpads – for instance, scrolling is accomplished by brushing two fingers on the pad, instead of having a dedicated scroll area on the side.  I like it better than the touchpad on any other laptop I’ve owned.