Tuesday, December 21, 2010

I Got One!

What a surprise!

Being Christmas time I was not surprised to find some boxes came in, though I did wonder why they came to me here at home instead of at work where I usually have them sent.  What surprised me, though, was in the box!

The Google Chrome OS Cr-48 pilot program Laptop!  

I was so excited I nearly forgot that I had to put the kids to bed first!  They were pretty excited, though, about me opening the box (almost as excited as I was).

I'll be doing reviews over time, between here and articles for DACS's newsletter, and I really do hope to be supplying feedback on the system's good and bad qualities. Not only because I am honored to have been picked, but I see the future as the blend of cloud and local systems and this system is a great chance to peer into that future!

One thing that got me in the beginning was trying to find out what the system's MAC address since my router does MAC address filtering.  I'm not sure where I found it, but ultimately going into chrome://system brought me a,.. um... page I guess, with all of the system's information.  It includes some Linux-friendly views such as dmesg, lspci, lsusb, etc.

 

Unfortunately, it's getting late, so I'll leave you with this.

obligatory goofy shot

(obligatory goofy picture) 

Even the cat wants to get into it

Even the cat wants to get into it!

Monday, December 13, 2010

Google Chrome OS Laptop


Google talked about their Chrome OS which seems to have been lost in the success of Android, until now. Now Google is starting to run a pilot program of the Chrome OS built into a laptop that they supply!


I won't mince words, I want one!


The pilot program is pretty simple. You request to be a part of it, filling out a questionnaire depending on your use (business, developer, individual, etc.) and if selected, receive a box containing the Cr-48 Chrome Notebook. Unfortunately I probably shot my foot when I mentioned that I develop in ASP.NET, though I was trying to indicate to them that I am familiar with web technology as well as Windows and Linux. Oh well.

Is this the only way to get your hands on the Chrome OS? Nope, you can get the open source Chromium OS to install on your own computer system. Other than combining a 12 inch screen, built-in Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, a webcam and 8 hours of battery life, there isn't that much different than a system running the Chrome or Chromium web browser.


So you can recreate this experience on your own system, but can this system recretae your experience on your current laptop or desktop? Yes, and no.


The biggest difference is that nothing is stored on the physical machine for the user, only system-level gunk works (drivers, system programs, services, etc.). The good side is that if something happens to the computer, nothing is lost beyond the computer.


A weakness of this is that not all applications have a cloud-based equivalent. This is where the Chrome Web Store is able to help. It provides a marketplace for people to deliver applications that work on the local system, without having to be installed like traditional applications.

Just like the Netbooks, this concept works great for the more common, mundane and non-resource hogging activities such as reading email, surfing the web, writing documents or spreadsheets and chatting. All of these, including image editing, are available in the growing list of Google applications and can assume that in time other popular applications will likewise become available. I remember Adobe even running a pilot program for Photoshop on the web!


So if you don't get one of these laptops, you can still feel the experience by either downloading and installing the Chromium OS, or just use the Chrome/Chromium browser on your system and change your thinking; don't touch that local application, or save that image to your hard drive. Pretty soon you'll probably start figuring out that cloud computing is doable, even today.


I still want one.