Shoutbox

In this thread about Google's homepage modifications, Cookie mentioned this:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
(same with their OS, which is a big usebility flop also, but that's a whole other discussion).

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I was just wondering, on what are you basing your opinion? I personally have not looked at Chrome OS, but have you (or anyone else here), and, in more detail, what did you think of it? Or has this all come from reading news articles etc?

I've seen a video about Chrome OS, and while I'll probably not be using it much if at all for anything other than pure novelty (I have an iso of Windows 3.11, enough said really) it does seem to be quite interesting. I can't really speculate on the more technical aspects as to whether it's a "revolutionary" bit of software and so on, but I'm sure it could help the netbook market somewhat as it's a more recognisable brand name, even if it still is based on Linux/Unix/whatever it is.

Currently it's not even out of beta stage yet (I think) and it's apparently scheduled to be let out in the latter half of next year.

Having given it a try, I'll just say the idea is pretty good... it's light-weight and basically much like a browser (which is the point of it). It is still in the beta stage, so there are many.. erm, for lack of a better word - flaws in it.
SO, being objective and keeping in mind that it is still under development, I'll just say that it is doing what it is designed to do. It is simple, fast, and web-based.
Obviously, it is not at all like a standard "pc" based OS, it is very very simplistic, basically you have an os that is like a browser... with the exception that in addition to browser tabs, you also have application tabs, it sort of looks like opening applications within a browser etc. ... which is pretty cool and useful, if you are using it on a netbook (takes up little screen space, is fast, just has the basic web based necessities )

I like it, although I am hoping for lots of improvements - to the stability, added features, making it more manageable and adding more ways to customize it.

It's basically cloud services; Google has been pushing that mentality for a while now. If you look at their online applications, they got docs (google docs), calendar (google cal), e-mail (gmail), video and music (youtube), pictures (picasa) search of course. If you notice, they give you 7GB of data, so they expect you to upload everything online. If everything IS online, there's no need to install anything locally.

So the advantage is of course the virus protection (you don't care if it does happen, you'll just flash the image), you don't care about losing data, all software upgrades are done on their server, and well you can use every machine you want, the only thing you need is your e-mail and password.

So it's good, but I don't think it'll really take off until we get some faster internets (at least in Canada) and some damn bandwith that doesn't cost us a leg every month.

Take your Chrome browser, delete *every* other application, including all the apps and little tolls which come with the OS. Disallow installing/running *any* application... There! you got Chrome OS.

Why waste the power of your netbook by going back to the old terminal days when it runs Windows 7 smoothly.

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Originally posted by Menthix
Take your Chrome browser, delete *every* other application, including all the apps and little tolls which come with the OS. Disallow installing/running *any* application... There! you got Chrome OS.

Why waste the power of your netbook by going back to the old terminal days when it runs Windows 7 smoothly.

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Better battery life and faster boot times?
Although I agree not enough reason to really use it...

But it could be usefull on like e-reader kind off devices... really small but you can still access the internet on it...

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Originally posted by foaly
But it could be usefull on like e-reader kind off devices... really small but you can still access the internet on it.

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True, makes much more sense on those kind of devices. But on a netbook (or better) I would never bother with it.

Sure, it does boot faster, DOS booted faster too. If you don't add any functionality in your OS you won't have to load anything. And you'll loose the time you won by having to load all your data and UI from the internet (hoping you even have an internet connection at the place you're at).

Better battery life I'm not so sure about. Most of the battery power is sucked out by the display, nothing will change to that on Chrome OS. The other big factor are CPU and GPU usage, assuming you do the same kind of tasks on both OSes I don't see that much difference there either.

I guess you could use it on a slow old computer that you just want the internet for.

Or you wait for arm netbooks to come out (which have superior battery life). Then you have no choice but to run linux.

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Originally posted by Kezzinator29
In this thread about Google's homepage modifications, Cookie mentioned this:

quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
(same with their OS, which is a big usebility flop also, but that's a whole other discussion).

---

I was just wondering, on what are you basing your opinion? I personally have not looked at Chrome OS, but have you (or anyone else here), and, in more detail, what did you think of it? Or has this all come from reading news articles etc?

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Well, basicly what the other peeps have said already....

It is nice as a novelty, but other than that it seriously lacks the useability of a real OS.

The idea of cloud computing is nothing new either (Google didn't invented it), but we are still very far away from it! Not to mention that the internet speeds are still way to slow for a full and decent working cloud OS. For small stuff (editing a document, reading a letter, etc) it is already possible, but that's it. Hardly a full OS I'd say.

As for virusses and loosing data goes, Albert: those will not be ruled out at all! It would still be very easy for a virus to spread among your data and applications as there is no difference between how it is now, other than that your stuff isn't on your local HDD, but on a HDD on some server. There is no difference at all. And you could still loose data by doing something stupid or by a server HDD crash (although the later would be less occuring because most servers have auto-backups and are RAID systems).