Intro
I like Chrome. In fact, I’m quite a fan of Google in general. I love the way the different parts interweave to make so many things simpler. Things that just a few short years ago, were difficult to do. Like being able to upload a file to Google Drive and then share it with others, or access it on my phone when I need to. Or being able to set appointments on my calendar on the web, and have it remind me on my phone.
I sometimes get asked questions about how to do this or that in Chrome, or Drive, or Keep. Somehow I seem to have become a go-to-guy for those kinds of questions—although I don’t really know why, because I don’t consider myself an expert by a long stretch.
All the same, there are some questions that get asked pretty often. So I thought I’d start a series of short blog posts about some of those things. And that’s what this is all about. Shall we begin, gentle reader?
Signing In
WHY should you sign in on Chrome?
You don’t have to sign in. And there are times when it would definitely NOT be a good idea. For example, signing in on a public computer at school, or at the library, or in a shopping mall… well, just don’t.
Like I said, you don’t have to sign in. You can still use Chrome as you would any other browser.
But if you do sign in… well, a whole bunch of things just got easier. All your bookmarks, for example, get synchronised on Google’s servers—Chrome uploads them for you. And then, if you sign into the same account on another machine (including Chrome on Android devices), those bookmarks and a lot of other things get downloaded into that copy of Chrome and can be used right away. No more messing with exporting and importing bookmarks and all the rest. And if you sign out, all that account-specific stuff gets wiped off the machine, nice and safe.
How do you sign in? Easy. All you need is a gmail account and password. If you already have gmail, skip down to ***. If you don’t already have one you can set one up in Chrome. Just open a new tab. At the upper right you should see a link to gmail. Click it. Sign up. That’s it.
And in fact that gmail address and password is your key to the whole range of Google products. I don’t need to tell you to…
… do I? DO I?
*** If you already have a gmail account, you use that to sign in on Chrome. (In fact, if you just signed up you should check to make sure Chrome signed into that account at the same time.) To do that click the Hamburger button 
at top right, click Settings, and check the Sign in section at the very top of the settings page. It’ll tell you if Chrome is signed in. If not, go ahead and do that using the gmail address and password.
In the next post: Multiple accounts.
Until next time . . .
Pete Ford 