Chromebooks revolve around the concept of being lightweight (physically and digitally) and are geared towards the connected world-- you more or less require an internet connection to make full use of them. Attached to this is the problem of software availability, which is something that Google has tried to solve by slowly porting Android apps over to Chromebooks.
In the latest effort by Google, they"ve teamed up with Adobe and have begun "streaming" Adobe Photoshop in a project Adobe has called "Project Photoshop Streaming." Currently in beta, it allows users to stream the entire software package within the browser window.
As with everything, there are some caveats:
- The user would need to hold an active Adobe "Creative Cloud" membership
- It is currently limited to customers from the U.S
- The user must be an Adobe Education customer
The first point makes sense, but the latter two are pretty off-putting. Nevertheless, the project is still in beta, so hopefully once it is finalized it will be made more widely available. Currently, as the streaming does not utilize the GPU, it pretty much means that a fairly large list of Photoshop features are unavailable (for now, anyway).
Don"t have a Chromebook? No problems. Adobe"s announcement page suggests that it works on Windows 7 or 8 machines that have Chrome installed as well. The decision on this is strange, as it would have been expected to be a Chromebook exclusive, at least initially. Given that Windows products are starting to match Chromebooks in price, this could have been a huge bonus for Chromebooks, which educators are failing to see the benefits in.
If you are interested in joining the beta, you can find the terms and conditions (as well as the full list of eligibility requirements) here and the application page to join the beta here.
Source: Google For Education | Image via Google