Torture Test

Day 2, a cup of coffee, and a full charged Chromebook. After my online morning ritual of email, news, Facebook, and grad school, I figured the best way to put the device through the wringer was to hand it off to my 10 year-old son. I didn't need the thumb screws to convince him to take advantage of unlimited play time on a new computer.

Any worries about keyboard confusion or the tricky track pad vanished in the first 10 seconds. It was about as difficult an adjustment for that digital native as transferring a goldfish to a new tank. He spent the better part of the morning making his way through Y8 games, YouTube videos of magic tricks (his latest thing), and compiling his 1,000 item Christmas list from Amazon. I did have to explain to him why we could not load Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 on the Chromebook, which he took with the nonchalance of short attention-spanned youth.

= Joe Montana was AWESOME!

When the boy got bored (or I kicked him off - can't remember), I checked the battery status. The machine had been running for over two hours straight and the battery indicator was at 80% even. The estimated time remaining was somewhere around 2 hours, 45 minutes. Since then I have learned to ignore the time remaining indicator, as its algorithm must be based on the same formula used to determine NFL passer ratings or pre-2012 NCAA bowl game participants. At 50%, the battery might offer you two more hours or ten based on what you have been doing and what it assumes you will be doing. This is probably normal for laptops, but I just never really relied on battery power that much. In my classroom, however, battery life will be paramount.

I spent several more hours surfing the web and adding apps. Much of the time was spent testing out educational sites, online curriculum samples, and other miscellaneous online resources I use in class. That's a huge, ongoing task, so I'll save it for a comprehensive report in another entry. Around the 6 hour mark of straight usage (without shutting the lid or letting the computer sleep), battery life was at 33%. So three hours remaining is a comfortable prediction. I did close the lid for a few hours, coming back to periodically check mail, forums, social networks, and such. As the sun set, I decided to try and kill the battery once and for all. After watching approximately 90 minutes of a Netflix movie, I finally got the low battery warning at 5%. Pretty impressive. While batteries do degrade over time, I can sleep easy knowing that these machines will last throughout the school day for my students without needing a charge.