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.
I found John Resig's review to be interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
Here [ejohn.org]:
The trackpad is absolutely infuriating. It’s as if Google attempted to create a similar trackpad to the Macbook Pro but just got it all wrong. There is two-finger scrolling (good) but no acceleration. Tap-to-click is frustrating and I disabled it immediately. There is no three-finger swipe-to-go-back gesture (which I miss a lot). Performing text selection is absolutely insane. It seems like any combination of having two fingers on the mouse pad simultaneously throws the laptop into “scroll” mode. It’s so bad that it makes me not want to write things on the laptop until it is fixed. As mentioned before there appears to be physical way of doing a right click – but I can’t find a single place in the UI where right-clicking has an effect.
I found this almost exact issue with the cheap netbook trackpads. Too bad Google didn't put a bit more effort into their prototype there.
The keyboard is easily the best part of the Cr-48 hardware. Replacing Capslock with a “New Tab” button is truly inspired. I’ve found myself already starting to rely upon it very heavily. The keyboard feels good to type on and the large Ctrl + Alt keys make for easy key combinations (important when using screen).
Sounds great.
Right now my ideal laptop would be: Take a 13 Macbook Pro, replace the HD with an SSD, replace the DVD drive with more battery, add 3G. I would use that laptop until the end of time.
This is pretty much my setup (external battery unfortunately, and USB 3G card).
I was disappointed by Google... (Score:3, Interesting)
...and here's why:
While the Cr-48's big event recently could be seen worldwide over the internet infrastructure that Google itself supports, testing of this device was only limited to those residing in the US!
This was unfair to those outside the United States. Making things even worse was the fact that at registration, one only came to this realization after being asked about what the U.S. State of residence is. This would be after asking for all other information!
Google should have allowed those without a U.S. shipping address to be billed for any expenses if they really wanted to be part of the testing regime. Heck...Google has "Google Checkout", right?
I was not happy at all. Google being a worldwide company would have benefited a lot from worldwide input.
How am I wrong?
What? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why on Earth do people care about this thing? You've got a big community that used to be mostly Open-Source advocates, and you can't even install software on this darn netbook. The *only* benefit to the average consumer is its low cost.
Right now we've got a bunch of idiots figuring out what tasks they'll use this for instead of their laptop or their netbook. The answer is none. If you are fortunate to own either of those devices, they'll do everything that this stupid thing will do *and* all of the stuff that they normally do. There is no reason at all for you to want a CR-48, aside from feeling cool that you got to be part of a Google beta program.
Not really... (Score:3, Interesting)
Today, PCs are way overpowered for what 99% of the population needs. New features are not driving much in the way of additional sales.
Perhaps, "needs" but not what they want. Take for instance what most people like to play their music with: iTunes. On a PC it is a memory hog, is laggy and needs a lot of power to run correctly. Sure, most people don't "need" iTunes, Foobar2000 does a great job organizing music on Windows, VLC is great at playing music/videos, etc. but most people are familiar with and want to use iTunes. And what about video playback? And forget about gaming without a dedicated video card, etc.
Plus, prices are still stagnant. Despite that generic Leveno netbooks have been out without a spec boost or anything for a year or two now, I don't see any real drop in prices. Bottom-end computers aren't getting any cheaper, despite them essentially doing less and less every year. I'd have no problem buying the Cr-48 if it cost less than a normal netbook (or heck, a bottom-end laptop!) if I'm going to be able to do less with it, the price needs to reflect it. I don't want to pay $300 for a netbook anymore, and if it is only in the "cloud" the price should be around $150 or so.