Last week I came home from work to find I was a “Chosen One.” The shipping box still cold from sitting outside in 15 degree weather, sat on the table near the front door. “I don’t remember ordering anything, and it’s too early for Granny’s cookies to arrive,” I thought. The box held much mystery for me, mystery that lasted all of 30 seconds or as long as it took me to get the shipping box open. Inside I saw the Cr-48 box I had seen in a YouTube unboxing video and you guessed it, a Google ChromeOS Cr-48. Oh the magic of Christmas, long gone since my childhood, had returned to my warm my heart once more. Like an Olympian winning the gold I let out a roaring cheer which prompted my wife to come running perhaps thinking I had found the map to El Dorado. Please forgive this moment of artistic liberty.
Seven days have passed since I discovered I can live in the cloud and although it’s not perfect, and there are some limitations, I can say “I like the air up there”
I won’t bore you by having you read that which has already been written and written some more. There are dozens and dozens more sites with unboxings and pictures of the screen and you’ve no doubt already heard the Cr-48 doesn’t do Netflix, won’t allow you to load media from an external HDD or SD card, has Flash issues and so on. By that reckoning one wonders why Google sent out such a busted hunk of junk, at least that seems to be the opinion of some out in the blogosphere.
For me, “Average Joe user," it’s a very nice bit of software & hardware. I’m not a Java coder, I don’t program in C/C++ and I don’t manipulate HD video, audio or photographs. I don’t play Modern Warfare on my computer, I have an Xbox 360 and a PS3 for games and to watch Netflix on. As I’m writing this post, I am doing so on my Cr-48, using Google Doc’s, then I’ll copy and paste into WordPress, even add a photo. Later I’ll check my email, Facebook and Twitter accounts and I can tell you they’ll work just fine. Netflix, isn’t supported; yet as mentioned, but I can watch movies and TV shows on Hulu. I’ve reserved library books, done my banking, created a blog (ChromeHead’s), had several video chats via Google Talk and even done a little Christmas shopping on my unmarked little black notebook. It boots faster than my iPhone 4 or either of my two other laptops, has great battery life and setup was a snap.
But it’s not all sunshine and billowy white clouds. The touchpad is a challenge, you have to learn what gestures do what. Another issue with it, it isn’t 100% accurate and I can’t seem to find just the right sensitivity setting(s). The Cr-48 is a bit under powered, just doesn’t seem to pack enough of a punch to handle the content of some sites. Using the built in camera to post video on YouTube was not good; the video quality was pixelated, choppy and maybe running at 15fps, which was odd because in Google talk the quality of the video and audio wasn’t too bad all things considered.
I have made an honest effort to live by the Cr-48 for the past 7 days and honestly it really isn’t hard or what I would call a life changing event, heck most of us spend 80% of our time or more in a web browser and ChromeOS isn’t much different than a browser. For the “Average Joe or Jane” there is a small learning curve and a few technical wrinkles. The question is, what the Cr-48 is and isn’t; it isn’t a Window’s notebook or Apple Macbook, it isn’t a gamer or programmers machine, It’s not particularly well suited to raster photo images, edit audio or video clips. What the Cr-48 is, is a small sample of what life could and will be like if you choose to live in “the cloud.” The Cr-48 running Google’s Chrome OS Beta is a good first step in a new direction, but new directions can be scary for many, as I’ve noticed by the number of neophobes writing about Google’s little black notebook.
Talk to you again at day 14...
Note: While writing this, Google Doc’s froze/crashed but I didn’t lose a single keystroke.
Cheers
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