Cr48 (Google Chrome OS Notebook)

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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.12.24 (08:56)

Anyone ever hear of this Google Chrome OS?
Well, apparently they're accepting applications to test a pilot model called the Cr48 (apply here).

I applied for it a little while ago, but I didn't really have much hope of getting included in the pilot study.

However, it turns out I was mistaken to have had low hopes because I am totally fucking using a Cr48 they fucking shipped me right the fuck now.
I would take a photo and send it to you, except that I have no idea how I would accomplish something like that with this OS.
[spoiler="you know i always joked that it would be scary as hell to run into DMX in a dark ally, but secretly when i say 'DMX' i really mean 'Tsukatu'." -kai]"... and when i say 'scary as hell' i really mean 'tight pink shirt'." -kai[/spoiler][/i]
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Postby squibbles » 2010.12.24 (09:15)

T̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư wrote:Anyone ever hear of this Google Chrome OS?
Well, apparently they're accepting applications to test a pilot model called the Cr48 (apply here).

I applied for it a little while ago, but I didn't really have much hope of getting included in the pilot study.

However, it turns out I was mistaken to have had low hopes because I am totally fucking using a Cr48 they fucking shipped me right the fuck now.
I would take a photo and send it to you, except that I have no idea how I would accomplish something like that with this OS.
Aw, US only. Let us know if you work out screenshots!
spoiler

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Tsukatu wrote:I don't know what it is, squibbles, but my brain keeps inserting "black" into random parts of your posts these days.
I totally just read that as, "I'd hate to be the only black guy stuck using v1.4."
[/ispoiler]

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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.12.24 (10:38)

Oh, screenshots are easy. Here's one:
screenshot-20101224-023608.png
What I don't know how to do is upload a photo to this thing and then attach it.
I guess I could take the photo, save it to my Dropbox via the related app, pull the file on this computer from the web interface on Dropbox, and then attach it. But I think the cloud-computing way would be to upload it to my Picasa from my phone and then link you to it, or something. But I don't have a Picasa. In fact, I don't really want most of the images I own being traced back to me.
[spoiler="you know i always joked that it would be scary as hell to run into DMX in a dark ally, but secretly when i say 'DMX' i really mean 'Tsukatu'." -kai]"... and when i say 'scary as hell' i really mean 'tight pink shirt'." -kai[/spoiler][/i]
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Postby SlappyMcGee » 2010.12.24 (16:04)

Loathes

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Postby smartalco » 2010.12.24 (18:43)

From the gizmondo article:
Has a search button instead of a caps lock button
This is weird AND I LOVE YOU GOOGLE.
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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.12.25 (01:29)

That's dumb. He's dumb.
The hardware in the test notebook is crap, because the whole point is to test the OS features; there is considerably less importance in actually trying to make decent use of it. I'd price the entire notebook at maybe $100. (It does look kinda cool, though.)
For example, I tried watching some shows on Hulu last night. The only way it didn't chop horribly was at 288p and in the original window (no fullscreen or even pop-out + expansion).
(Although I guess the more obvious solution to this is to write a player in HTML 5 so we can get away from this CPU-abusing Flash nonsense.)

I can use this thing for just about everything except work, but I'm still being constantly reminded of the things I can't do. I can see how it'd be fine for a typical cluser (web browsing, chat, videos, flash games, Google Docs, Picasa, etc.), but as a power user I consider my usage extremely restricted.
If the Cr48 was on the market, I'd buy it for my computer-illiterate child, and only if he's utterly disinterested in watching TV shows online in a Flash player.
[spoiler="you know i always joked that it would be scary as hell to run into DMX in a dark ally, but secretly when i say 'DMX' i really mean 'Tsukatu'." -kai]"... and when i say 'scary as hell' i really mean 'tight pink shirt'." -kai[/spoiler][/i]
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Postby Universezero » 2010.12.27 (08:22)

Aside from processing power, what merits does the OS itself has? How would Chrome OS stack up against Windows 7/OS X/Linux on the same machine? That is to say, is the whole cloud thing better than a standard OS?
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Postby SlappyMcGee » 2010.12.27 (15:33)

I'm pretty sure that Jolicloud blows ChromeOS out of the sea.
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Postby Vyacheslav » 2010.12.27 (16:12)

Chrome OS apparently is just designed to look at photos, browse the web, etc. I'd much rather get a netbook. Much more compatibility + flexibility, even power.
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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.12.27 (17:03)

Universezero wrote:Aside from processing power, what merits does the OS itself has? How would Chrome OS stack up against Windows 7/OS X/Linux on the same machine? That is to say, is the whole cloud thing better than a standard OS?
The only real merits I can think of revolve around its portability. The full boot time is around 10 seconds, and the login, sleep, and wake-up times are near-instantaneous. There is an easily accessible "guest login" mode which sandboxes the guest and deletes cookies, browsing history, downloads, etc., when he logs off (in most OS's, you have to set up some kind of kiosk software to get this kind of partitioning). And in the long term, if a large body of people use Chrome OS, the physical computer you use no longer matters -- every setting, bookmark, app, etc., will be available to you just as it would be on your very own machine when you log in using your Google account.
And heck, chatting on Google Talk (and other protocols provided by web apps, although my trust in those is limited) was painless. Video chat and phone calls through gmail were very straight-forward and functional, even with the Cr48's shitty hardware.

The main drawback associated with these merits is that customizability is nearly non-existent. You can pick some themes which will be visible in the tab bar and the "new tab" window and change your keyboard layout, but that's about as many choices as you get. Chrome OS is based on Linux, but you have no access to a shell. Lord knows what kinds of services are running in the background whose only consequences are additional security holes (I can't even check without port-scanning it from a different machine... which I'm surprised I haven't done yet; I'll post here again with the details of that). They even explicitly removed file browsing capabilities: the "file:///" URI is disabled in the browser, and for the sake of attachments you're chrooted into a download directory.
There is a small selection of web-based development tools (such as Kodingen(.com)), but they're all in beta, severely limit your licensing options, and can't grant you any kind of peace of mind about the code's availability at any given moment. The best it has for text editing is some simplistic notepad web apps (if not Google Docs, but MS Word clones are hardly plaintext editors). And there is neither availability of nor even capability for secure remote logins (e.g. via ssh); only a fool would trust an ssh client provided by a web app, and a VPN client web app is self-defeating.

(Although there is this Chrome console thing whose use I have yet to figure out. The only thing I've found out about it is that it is not a POSIX-compliant shell. I fear I'll have to learn something about Chrome (the browser) development in order to get any serious functionality out of it.)

I'll repeat my previous conclusion:
"I can see how it'd be fine for a typical cluser (web browsing, chat, videos, flash games, Google Docs, Picasa, etc.), but as a power user I consider my usage extremely restricted."
[spoiler="you know i always joked that it would be scary as hell to run into DMX in a dark ally, but secretly when i say 'DMX' i really mean 'Tsukatu'." -kai]"... and when i say 'scary as hell' i really mean 'tight pink shirt'." -kai[/spoiler][/i]
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