The ChromeOS file manager has always been a bit.... rubbish. Kind of. Back in the very early days it only let you work with the Chromebook's (very small) local file system. Then, some time later, they added Google Drive integration, which was seriously handy. But it still lacked some important stuff, like the ability to mount filesystems from Windows machines, or to use sftp, or the like.

That seems to have all changed with the addition of the "Add new services" button:

As is often the way with Chromebooks, unless you're closely following forums or Google+ communities (I don't), you tend not to know when this stuff is going to turn up or even when it does (I mean, really, is it too much to ask that the device alert you to handy new features? I mean, my watch did!). For all I know this has been there a while and it's the first time I've noticed.

No mater how long it's been there, it's really rather handy. I've already been able to hook it up to my Dropbox account, there's an SMB filesystem handler (that I've not had a chance to test yet) and an sftp service (which I have tested and seem to work well enough for my needs). There's more too:

I'm guessing there's an API out there now that people can work with so I guess the list of services you can install will grow over time.

For people who want to do a little more than just browse the web, Chromebooks (and other Chrome* devices for that matter) just got a little more useful.

Since the last update I've being having a rather odd issue on my old Chromebook. This is my Samsung Series 5, the "original" commercial Chromebook to be released (in the UK anyway). I first noticed it in TweetDeck but have since noticed that it's affecting any browser tab. Simply put, sections of the display either "lag" in their content or they simply show up empty.

First I tried to get a screenshot of what was going on but it didn't work. I did get to show that there was a problem, but what was grabbed by the screenshot wasn't what I saw seeing on the screen. Here's the screenshot:

The only way I can show how it looked to me on the screen is with a (rather horrible I'm afraid) photo:

It's unclear to me if this is something wrong with the Chromebook itself, or in this release of the OS. It is running the beta channel -- currently on 44.0.2403.54 -- so, of course, this sort of thing is to be expected.

If it is the case that that Chromebook is on its way out -- either in terms of that actual machine dying or support for it at the OS level going away -- it won't be a terrible loss. It's been a great machine and has served me well and wasn't terribly expensive to begin with (the lack of expense is one of the things I really like about Chromebooks, which is why the Pixel continues to perplex me), replacing it with one of the newer crop of Chromebooks won't break the bank.

But I'd be a little sad to see it go, I've done some pretty significant things on it and it is, in some ways, a little bit of computer history.

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Edit to add: I've now moved it back over to the stable channel, with a powerwash on the way (of course) and this seems to have done the trick. I'm no longer seeing any problems. The switch to stable even had the problem showing. Here's a video of stable downloading:

That's pretty much the sort of thing I was seeing all over the place, and it appeared to be getting worse as time went on.

Hopefully this was a one-off and the problem isn't simply up in the beta cannel and waiting to head down to stable.

I've no idea when this happened, and I'll admit that the advice it gives is advice I've mostly being following anyway for quite a long time, but it seems that ssh in the ChromeOS terminal has been removed. This is what just happened when I tried to use it just now:

To be fair, Chrome Secure Shell is pretty damn good and has served me well for the past couple or so years, working well on the Chromebook and on Windows 7 and 8 (and also now on the Mac, although I'm tending to use ssh in its native terminal more).

I wonder if any other of the limited features of the ChromeOS terminal (in non-dev mode anyway) are going to go the same way?

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As an aside to the above, something kind of ironic happened as I was writing this. I opened Chrome so I could preview the post as I was writing it and I suffered one of Chrome's rather common extension crashes. Look what one of those extensions was (and I wasn't even using it at the time):

Not exactly the best advert for the non-optional replacement.