ChromeOS
by zeroql
As a daily internet user it’s no big surprise that I came across the promotional videos about the new, shiny, to be released in the third quarter of 2010 Google operating system – ChromeOS.
And I don’t know if it is just me but I don’t believe that there are that much people who are just using there netbooks to surf the internet and not more. Before buying the MacBook I’m writing on right now, I was using a MSI Wind U100. I played around with a lot of OSs. Windows, OSX and finally I tried some of the already released “netbook OSs” – JoliCloud and Moblin. Not exactly the same like what Google is aiming at with their operating system but the idea is the same. Put everything in the big cloud. Yeah, cloud computing one of the biggest buzzword this year. And of course this not a bad idea. I mean, just watch the UI Demo Video for Chromium, your system will boot in less than 5 seconds, you will just have to enter your Google account login credentials and bam, there it is, all you need online. Reachable from everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, I really like this idea even if I have to give Google more and more information about myself again and again. But as I said, I played around with JoliCloud and Moblin, and of course it’s pretty simple. Add web applications and use them. Disregarding some beta issues those both systems are great when it comes to surfing, chat and watching youtube videos. But both systems also have a lot of problems when it comes to daily actions I was doing on my netbook.
Local data management. Moblin and JoliCloud are a pain in the a** when it comes to find and use files on your local disk. The digicam and usb stick examples in the Google presentation are not looking much better. Guys, I don’t want to put EVERYTHING on your drives. And how will a web browser help me copy and paste files which are stored locally.
I hope this is one of the things which will be thought over till the final version is going to be released.
Home network. Okay the idea is, no files stored on my local hard drive. So maybe, but just maybe I feel the need to open, edit or what ever I want to do with files which are stored on my local network. Of course with some linux knowledge it’s no problem to use samba to get a connection to my windows shares. But this is so far away from the simplicity these systems are looking for. This left completely unmentioned in the UI demo I’m not expecting a idea from Google on that aspect.
File playback. What happens when I’m trying to open a video which is using a codec, not implemented in the Chromium kernel? On the other two systems I had problems installing alternative players to view my video material. And when I got everything right there will be no way to install additional software on ChromeOS. Everything is integrated in the kernel, but what if it is not?
No internet? What happens when I’m not able to establish a internet connection? Ok there is Google Gears, so maybe you’ll be able to view the files which are cached on you local disk. Again this one left completely unmentioned in the UI demo. Let’s see.
Beside these three or four points I’m looking forward to play around with ChromeOS and maybe it will be the perfect system for people like my little sister who are not doing much more than surfing, checking mails and chatting with friends. But as its looks at the moment it’s not going to be a operating system for me.