Hands-On With Google's Cr-48 158
adeelarshad82 writes "While Google has made it clear that Cr-48 is nothing more than a test prototype, it was interesting to see the machine Google used to demonstrate Chrome OS. Out of the box, the Cr-48 conjures images of the Black Apple MacBook, from the plain, rubberized chassis to what looks like the same chiclet-style keyboard. The 12-inch notebook weighs about 3.8lbs and comes with a clickpad which recognizes one finger as a left click, while a two-finger tap triggers a right-click function. The laptop obviously contains a hard drive for storing backup data, but the capacity is unknown. The notebook comes with a lone USB port on the right side, which has limited functionaly. For now, thumb drives, hard drives, cameras, printers and other USB peripherals do not work with Cr-48. Google is working on getting its Chrome OS to recognize storage drives, but it's a work in progress. Once Chrome OS does recognize storage drives, users can probably install other OSes on Cr-48 for fun. Video playback seems to struggle with Hulu videos, while YouTube clips were okay. The device operates at a 1,280x800 resolution, which means the Cr-48 can theoretically support 720p video playback, but the videos were capped at 480p."
Engadget posted photos a Cr-48 teardown if you'd like a look at its guts. An article at InfoWorld suggests Google needs to work on the cloud offerings underpinning the device.
Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Unknown capacity? I checked the about:system logs, although I have a hard time reading them, it seems to indicate sda1 is 16gb in size. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
Also I think I was able to get 720p; I'm not sure. But it's easy to check, I'm sure you can try lowering your desktop res and seeing if YouTube caps the resolution. But I doube it.
Re:I found John Resig's review to be interesting (Score:1, Informative)
Too bad Google didn't put a bit more effort into their prototype there.
Or maybe they're working around Apple's (purchased) patent.
Wouldn't buy one. (Score:2, Informative)
Too many places I've been where you want a laptop or video viewer, but don't have cloud access.
Re:Timing... (Score:4, Informative)
I for one never ever ever want to go back to managing and maintaining contacts on a damn cell phone again. Much rather be able to add them "to the cloud" and edit/change them from my PC/phone/whatever from "the cloud" - and replace my phone with another Android based phone (hey, my G1 is definitely up for retirement) and need do nothing but log in. Same goes for a variety of other Google Services.
I like the cloud for contacts and calendar, too. But, I dont' want to give Google any more info on me than they already have.... so I am running a Zimbra server that lets me push stuff to my phone. Giving Google full control over all my info, documents, and apps, does not sound like a good time to me.
And why can't you use your own cloud servers? I'm only a half decent programmer, but I know how to use both dedicated/our own cloud servers AND link what data I need/want to through Google's services for where there's overlap (like contacts, maps, docs, picasa, etc). It's very very easy. All the APIs are in place. Anyone with just a little programming skill can do it.
Heck, you can even run your own versions of Google's services to "disconnect" from them yet still run the same services solely for you and/or your customers.
Do Not Want! (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, it's secure. It reloads the original OS if it detects a change. It only lets a limited selection of apps to run.
It stores everything on servers, so I have to connect to the net to access my data. (Anyone remember the SideKick fiasco?)
Meaning, that much of the time I won't have access because I'm down in the basement of some old building on the edge of town, etc, etc, lather, rinse, wish it had a dialup as it'd be more useful than this dreck.
If I want freedom and mobility like that, I can just handcuff myself to a steel post.
Running Knoppix off a CD in a real netbook would be a dream compared to this, and secure as well.
If I were the Big Brother from the old Apple commercial and wanted to control my minions utterly, this would be my wet dream.
(It'd be useful for some corporate situations where usefulness should be limited to a small set of operations. I assume it has a way to put an allowed site list or some such, but maybe not even that.)