Chrome OS—Is there productivity in the clouds?
Monday, December 7th, 2009Are you ready to risk it all in the clouds? — Google certainly hopes so. With its new Chrome OS, Google is betting on users moving to the cloud.
Early developer versions of the operating system have been available for a few weeks. Unfortunately, the developer versions are not for the inexperienced and require the installation of source control software. Thanks to the efforts of a few developers in the community, you can download easy to install images. Finally, folks can stop speculating and see for themselves what Chrome OS is all about.
It’s probably no surprise that I downloaded an image as soon as I heard they were available. As with most early versions of operating systems, only a limited number of computers are fully supported. I found that not all features worked correctly with my test system, but enough to get a glimpse of what’s to come.
The first thing that struck me was that without an Internet connection, you are essentially dead in the water. This isn’t really surprising since the only interface to your system is through the Chromium browser. I have been an active Netbook user for quite a while now and can tell you, you can’t depend on always having a stable WI-FI connection. Even common locations such as Barnes and Noble provide flakey connectivity at best. Without being able to access the local operating system in a non-networked scenario, your productivity will be less than stellar.
It’s also not the most pleasant experience trying to edit photos or video in a cloud app. Sometimes you want to work in a local application. Under the current design, Chrome OS doesn’t provide that functionality. Since the underlying engine to Chrome is Linux, it’s hard to understand why they don’t harness more of Linux’s functionality.
What is nice is the almost instantaneous boot into Chrome. Boot time puts Windows 7 and Mac OS X to shame. I guess if the only application you are loading is a browser, it should boot pretty quick,ly but it’s still impressive.
Pricing should also be a pleasant treat since Chromium is supposed to be free. This should reduce the cost of even small systems such as Netbooks.
Most of my activities are performed through a web browser, but do I really want to be limited to a single browser, and the Chromium browser at that? That’s a hard sell. Maybe in the future world of WiMAX and reduced 3G costs it won’t matter, but for now I think it does. I am not ready to put all of my eggs in the cloud basket. I like having a limited set of local applications. I also like being able to run multiple browsers; choosing the best for each activity.
For now, a more sensible solution is to use an OS such as Jolicloud which allows you to surf with Chromium and run Linux applications locally.
Edited by @malitchick
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