The Chromebook FAQ
One of the big announcements at Google's I/O developer conference is the release of notebooks running the search giant's Chrome OS.
One of the big announcements at Google's I/O developer conference is the release of notebooks running the search giant's Chrome OS.
Google's I/O developer conference, held 10-11 May in San Francisco, has already been the site of a swathe of announcements by the search giant and its partners.
Though Google is pitching it as an operating system for netbooks and lightweight notebooks, Chrome OS is essentially the Chrome Web browser bolted on top of a bare minimum version of Linux. The following extensions can improve the user experience of Chrome (OS or browser) to give you some of the functionality found in a traditional operating system.
Computers and their software today are too complicated, and users are increasingly looking at iPads and cloud-based services such as Google Docs to handle the basics that most of us stick to: document editing, photo management, emailing, Web browsing, and the like. Running Office on a PC or Mac is beyond overkill for most people. Google proposes we do away with the PC altogether, at least part of the time, and replace it with Google's cloud-based laptop -- an appliance in which the Chrome browser serves as operating system. With the Chrome OS, all actions occur in the browser and the cloud.
Google's prototype Chrome OS laptops do not yet support Java, and support for Flash Player 10.1 is being called a "work in progress."
Have you already tried Chrome OS using a virtual machine, and were less than impressed? Well now you can get a feel for how Google's Web-centric operating system will run natively on your machine. T
My holiday gift giving season started early Thursday morning when the UPS guy pounded on my door and handed me a package. Inside was a notebook -- Google's much-discussed cloud-based Cr-48 Chrome OS laptop, which was announced by the company on Tuesday.
The CR-48 has landed! This morning, we received one of Google's first Chrome OS-powered laptops. As you'll see in our video, the CR-48 looks a lot like an old black Apple MacBook that's trying to sneak past customs -- it's all flat black with no stickers or even product logos anywhere to draw attention.
Google's Chrome OS is coming to a netbook near you sometime later this year. The Web-centric, Linux-based, open source platform will offer a lightweight, cost-effective alternative operating system for portable computing.
It's official: Google plans to debut its Chrome operating system in the fourth quarter of this year, although the company has yet to provide an exact launch date. Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of product management, made the announcement Wednesday at the Computex trade show in Taipei, according to IDC News.
Despite Google's move into the operating system (OS) space, the idea of a primarily cloud-centric OS is nothing revolutionary; the earliest examples date back to 1999. And although numerous other attempts at developing Web-centric OSes none up to this point have truly broken into the mainstream. But some current offerings present welcome alternatives to mainstream operating systems, packing in useful features and making it easier to access your online content.