Knowing the profile of people on here I’m sure there is enough wisdom to help an education project I’m involved with. They are in need of desperate help with some new machines they have. Google is not your friend in this case. They want £700 to show how to use apps but aren’t addressing the basic use issues.
The main difficulties are:
The lack of (obvious) compatibility creates issues about sending documents to other none Google machines
It is proving difficult to save work to memory sticks (for pupils to use their work elsewhere)

Can anyone point me in the direction of real support?

I don’t know where else does support them, but what you are asking seems simple on the face of it.

After creating or opening a doc in google docs, choose “file” then “download as” to choose an appropriate format for compatibility with other systems (word, pdf etc).

I don’t seem to have a problem with memory sticks. Just plug it in, open the “file” app too open/copy files. It should appear in the download dialogue when choosing to download files from google docs.

I work in a school using Google Apps, have a Chrome book, an Android phone and am typing this on a Chrome base.

I have learnt the Google way very quickly, happy to help if and where I can.

It might be easier to post specific issues to allow exact answers. Email me if you want.

Not a Chrome book user (so I really qualified to comment)

It is proving difficult to save work to memory sticks (for pupils to use their work elsewhere)

Can you get your students to create their own Goolge accounts and then save the work to their own Google Drive. This avoids the need to use a memory stick, lets the autosave work and they can log into their account from home and continue to work on the document in a browser.

Don’t try to use it as a laptop (save to a memory stick)

Compatibility should not be an issue as you can edit online or download it a wide range of formats using “File > Download As”

as above ^

I use chromebooks for all my work and often convert format to send to clients with no problems.

File menu, “Download As” is your friend for saving in a particular file format to USB Stick or attaching to email.

If you are composing email on the chromebook, you can use the Drive icon at the bottom of the email editor to attach files from Drive as “Attachement” or as a a Drive Link if sending it to a google user.

Thanks, I’ll see how we get on tomorrow and let you know.

The lack of (obvious) compatibility creates issues about sending documents to other none Google machines

You can install Chrome on any other PC, Mac, whatever – and then all you need to do is log onto Google and all your docs will be there. Assuming you saved them to Google Drive of course, and the PCs are connected to the internet.

It’s “cloud computing”. What this means is you don’t email copies of things to each other or carry them around on disks and what not – one copy exists in a cloud, a sort of virtual location, that you can access from anywhere and anything via the internet.

If you want someone else to see or edit something, you can select ‘share’ and specify everyone or specific people. They will then be able to see it and/or work on it as if it were on their computer.

This concept is one of Google’s “things” that they are pushing, and a Chromebook is a cloud terminal. Your kids can even see their stuff on their Android phones (I think, anyway, and possibly also edit them). That may stimulate some creative collaboration between friends 🙂

Our kids use loads of Google apps at school – as above, save it all to google drive, no memory sticks needed.