For those who don't know, the CR-48 is an Intel Atom based netbook designed by Google for the purpose of testing it's new Operating System, ChromeOS. ChromeOS is basically an operating system built around a web browser. It doesn't allow you to store any information or programs locally; it's entire purpose is to be a portal to the Cloud. The CR-48 is not a consumer machine, and thus it is lacking in some areas, but as a test machine it's pretty grand.
Hardware Pros: 12 inch screen is the perfect size, 8 hour battery life (supposedly, I haven't really tested that yet, although I've been unplugged for about 2 hours and still have 90% battery), built in 3g, good keyboard, clean design, built in webcam.
Hardware Cons: Trackpad feels a bit clunky, only one usb port (though at the moment it doesn't seem to be very useful), webcam is rather inadequate, not enough video memory.
Software Pros: Holy cow this thing is fast. Boots in less than 10 seconds, hibernates and resumes instantly, and of course, even my 1mb connection at home is blazing with this notebook. Everything is very clean, screen resolution is crystal clear, and the web app store is very user friendly. Chrome automatically syncs all of your apps, themes, etc. across machines, and it actually works (!). Web apps such as jaycut and picnik work very well, very quickly.
Software cons: There is no file manager. This OS is linux based, which means there is a file manager, but it is not accessible at all. There is no built in media player (Google says they are working on this), there is no direct printer support, all printing must be done by way of the "cloud print service", which is basically the same thing as local network printing. It requires your printer to be attached to the network, either by way of its own network interface or by way of another (windows or mac) machine. There is ZERO iPod support (and Apple has no plans to build a cloud centered iTunes). There is very poor support for multiple monitors. The ability to use multiple virtual desktops is there, but it's confusing and less than useful. Flash is really quite primitive, but it seems that Google and Adobe are working very quickly to remedy this. The first time I tried to watch YouTube it looked like a slideshow, but after a few hours (and a couple of reboots) it began playing a little more normally. Hulu still lags a bit, and Netflix is not supported at all (not because of the OS but because Netflix's programmers are dummies!).
All in all there are some things I really like about this notebook, some things I don't like and some things that will take some getting used to. The really beautiful thing about this sort of platform, though, is that it is set up to grow as quickly as web technology itself. Which means those with ChromeOS notebooks will literally be able to watch the technology change and evolve right before their eyes. (Idealistic, I know, but that's kind of the idea behind a cloud OS.)
PS. This blog post written on a CR-48 ChromeOS Notebook :)
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