Is that possible to use Zotero and annotate my PDFs on a chromebook?

liuwenqiang · February 17, 2018

Hello everyone, I want to buy a tablet to use Zotero and annotate my PDF files. Previously I thought about the tablet with Win10 OS and kind people on this forum give me the suggestion on Surface Pro.
However, I found that the Chromebooks are much cheaper. And all I want to do with a tablet is to use Zotero to organize my references and annotate the PDF files. That is a very simple task. So I am wondering does anybody use Zotero on a Chromebook with a touchable screen? I also want to read and annotate the attached PDF files of the items in Zotero. Which type of Chromebook is suitable for my purpose? Could you please give me some advice?
Any help would be much appreciated!

bwiernik · February 17, 2018

No, Chromebooks cannot run the Zotero desktop client, so they won't be suitable for your purpose.

liuwenqiang · February 17, 2018

Thanks very much!
It seems Ubuntu can be installed on Chromebooks. Is that possible to use Zotero on a Chromebooks with another Linux OS like Ubuntu?

bwiernik · February 17, 2018

Yes, if you install Ubuntu onto a Chromebook, you can install the Zotero app. But you would want to first be sure that the touchscreen on the Chromebook model you choose works well under Ubuntu.

adamsmith · February 17, 2018

Also, Zotero isn't a resource hog, but it does use a fair amount of memory, so the Chromebook would need to have reasonable RAM memory -- the 4GB most currently Chromebooks come with should be enough, but older 2GB models aren't going to give you much joy. If this is a secondary device, you'll want to set syncing files to "as needed" so your harddisk doesn't fill up. For a main device, I'd be worried. My Zotero attachments, e.g. are >10GB, so that'd be a sizeable chunk of a regular Chromebook's harddisk.

liuwenqiang · February 18, 2018

Thanks very much for all your help!
It seems it is not a very good idea to use Zotero on a Chromebook at this moment. I'd prefer to get a tablet with Win10 instead.
However, since the Chromebooks are much cheaper than other devices, and the main users of them maybe are students, I think that if Zotero can work on Chromebooks, a lot of users would be very glad to see that.