Kogan Beats Samsung and Acer With World's First Chrome OS Laptop 103
cylonlover writes "Australian manufacturer Kogan will ship the world's first notebook featuring Google's open source Chrome OS from June 7. The release date for the 11.6'' Agora Chromium Laptop means that Kogan has pipped Samsung and Acer by just over a week in the race to be the first company to offer a Chromium OS notebook."
Beat? (Score:2)
Does this really matter (news about one beating others by a week) when chromebooks are at least 2 years late to the party? (netbooks accounted for about 20% of laptop marketshare (NPD 2009), tablets are taking 60-70% of that... there is not much left AFAIK)
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Google is dominated by engineers, not designers. That is why the work on the interesting parts of problems that mattered four years ago, instead of the essential parts of problems that matter now.
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You're not getting it. Also, two years ago, these would be less useful than now.
The internet evolved enough to allow everyone to "carry their own kiosk", which denies the user a full-fledged local persistent storage. Somewhat like iPad and iPhone, taking the idea to the extreme, allowing web applications to evolve and allow customers to further detach from well known OS vendors (such as Apple, Microsoft) that could sabotage access to Google web applications.
ChromeOS and Chrome and Andriod are here for two r
Re:Beat? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Prevent "ad lockout" ie ready for flash/cookie/tracking/database/web 2.0+ads every start up.
2) Upgrade client side revenue stream technology (allowing a better profiting from web applications)
The Race to Get a Google OS Laptop to Market!! (Score:2)
or: "Where did all those flames come from and why are we in this handbasket?"
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I think its been well proven that Android does not prevent "vendor lockout" - quite a few vendors just treat it the same as any other off the shelf OS they would have purchased for their mobile device, not as the open and ubiquitous single OS/multiple device platform that Google wanted.
Re:Beat? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes and no. The fact that you can get an android phone from any carrier or vendor makes it hard for anybody to go way overboard on controlling the platform. Ultimately if anybody messes up the consumer experience too much they'll go elsewhere since they have options.
I think their main concern was that they didn't want the iPhone cornering the market. Apple is pretty heavy-handed with controlling the experience there, and if they felt like Google ads or services weren't the ones their customers should be using, Google would be stuck fighting things out in court. By giving consumers options it constrains what everybody else can get away with - why would you buy a phone that limits options you actually care about when other devices don't?
Plus, Chrome and Android are forcing the market to advance. How fast were Javascript interpreters a few years ago? How fast are almost all of them today? Arguably Firefox is a lot faster at rendering Google's pages as a result of Chrome coming out than it would have been if Google merely tried to submit patches for it.
Competition keeps everybody honest.
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The internet evolved enough to allow everyone to "carry their own kiosk",
And mobile devices have evolved enough to allow everyone to run a full fledged OS with a web browser AND apps. And laptops are even more powerful. There's just no good reason now to lock yourself into a web browser.
Somewhat like iPad and iPhone, taking the idea to the extreme, allowing web applications to evolve and allow customers to further detach from well known OS vendors (such as Apple, Microsoft) that could sabotage access to Google web applications.
Wow, now that's just FUD. How are Apple and Microsoft going to sabotage your access to web applcations? As long as you can install Firefox or Chrome, you've got at least the same functionality as a Chromebook, and then some. Besides, even if Apple or Microsoft did do something to cripple Google
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Simply put, you answered yourself. Competition. If Google locked you in to their service, then people would just use a competing service that didn't lock you in to using their formats. Proof reading your post, while thinking about what you're saying would prevent FUD that you're unnecessarily spreading.
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You sound like you're talking about iOS a few years ago.
You can install ChromeOS on any PC you want, not just "underpowered systems".
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Have you tried that? My every attempt at that has been dismal at best, even with Hexxeh's compiles. Unless the system is designed for ChromeOS, or Hexxeh has specifically targetted it, it's a bit of a nightmare.
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Haven't tried it nope, and I don't really feel the need to now that I have my Xoom. They are a bit late.
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3G Xoom + keyboard + keyboard case = $1000
3G iPad + keyboard + keyboard case = $1000
3G Chromebook = $500, or $20/month if you're a student.
That's the math that they're counting on people doing.
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Netbook + 3G modem = $400 at most.
But most likely you already have a 3G phone through which said netbook can be easily tethered (why pay for 2 data plans when you can pay for one?), so make that $300. And I'm being generous here, because you can actually find one for $250.
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Boots up faster than Windows, and presumably even faster than most Linux distros.
This was actually the reason I started using OSX over Windows at first, simply because it would boot into a useful mode (browsing/media playing) faster. I then switched to Ubuntu which had a similar or slightly faster boot time.
For Windows you could use hibernate, but hibernate has never worked nicely for me on Windows. Windows is also just.. meh.
Chrome or Chromium? (Score:4, Informative)
If Kogan is shipping Chrome, and Samsung and Acer are shipping Chromium, these are different things. Not terribly different, but different enough that it'd be interesting either way.
See, Chromium is an open-source project. Chrome is Google's proprietary fork of Chromium -- essentially, Google tracks Chromium, but (I think?) adds some stuff to it. While they've removed h.264, that was a good example -- Google can pay for a license and include any amount of proprietary h.264 code they want in Chrome, but the Chromium project can't do the same.
Please correct me if this has changed. It'd be cool if there were no remaining proprietary bits in Chrome (or in Chrome OS), but I doubt it. The Wikipedia page on Chromium OS doesn't list any significant differences vs Chrome OS, but if the browsers themselves are significantly different [wikipedia.org], surely the OSes have to be?
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Google also makes a Chrome browser build for Linux, which is often confused with Chromium browser available in most distro's repositories.
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That's exactly the situation! Good guess...
Chromium is the (Google-run) open source project. Google then take this, build in flash, and deliver it as Chrome
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Chrome also supports secure boot - I don't believe chromium does (and in any case this requires hardware/firmware-level support as well).
I'm also not sure if chromium OS supports auto-updates.
As far as codecs go - I'm not sure what chromium does/doesn't support. However, many linux distros tend to skirt patents around things like h.264. Often they will not include these codecs, but will make them easy to install from sources where the patent does not apply. Google might be reluctant to do the same since
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And this is why, when I started this thread, I linked to a list of differences [wikipedia.org]. It's more than just Flash, though it's also a small enough list that you might easily write it off -- and it really does seem that these are mostly things they can't release because of licensing issues. Still, it's enough that it's fair to say that Chrome itself is proprietary, and Chromium is open source.
The thing is don't we already have these video codecs supported in most distributions?... In Ubuntu it pops up saying you are missing codecs usually and alerts you to install them if you so desire to.
Does it do that in Chrome, and for the Video Tag? I know it doesn't for Firefox. This was one of my bigger annoyances with th
chromium os not chrome os (Score:3)
This appears to be running the open source chromium os and not the proprietary google chrome os.
Chromium os is what you get if you go and download the source code and compile but i would expect that you need to have some sort of partnership with google in order to get some parts of chrome.
It should not make much of a difference as chromium is the upstream but there could be bits that are not included.
Chrome OS will fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
I say this as someone who was on the CR-48 pilot. The reason is not Chrome OS itself: the problem is that cloud-only is impossible for anything serious. One hits a wall in which no web-app suffices to do what needs be done.
For me, the Google eco-system's permanent beta cripples it and ensures the longevity of its competitors. The issues for me? After all these years, there is no bibliography / citation management system for Google Docs that works in the cloud (at least nothing that could work with a Chromebook.) And, you can't define styles in Google docs. The absence of offline mode - the deprecation of Gears without implementing a replacement - was another disaster.
Google's strategy has been to create disruptive technologies, but that's no longer enough. A good anecdote to describe Google's failure to fully deliver is what happened to the founders of Foursquare: after having designed Dodgeball and getting acquired by Google, the were left high-and-dry, their technology more or lest left on a shelf. They got fed up and left, and created what should have been a strong Google product. Google tried to play catch up with Latitude, but it flopped, like all the other half-assed, unfinished products that wind up in its portfolio.
There is a lot Google does right, but it simply can't deliver a full working environment. Fundamental problems in its product management culture will have to be resolved before anything on the scale of a Chrome OS will work.
Re:Chrome OS will fail. (Score:5, Interesting)
"There is a lot Google does right, but it simply can't deliver a full working environment. Fundamental problems in its product management culture will have to be resolved before anything on the scale of a Chrome OS will work."
Not only that but the whole "cloud" concept for private people doesn't make any sense at all. Storage and CPU power is so cheap, but compared to that the connection to the internet is very expensive and very unreliable. Even in high-tech countries like the US, or Germany, the latency is very height, like 60ms up to 100ms (compare that with the computer latency with is around 1ms), and it's expensive compared to 0$ for the local hard disk. If we are compare G3/G4/UMTS then it's much more expensive, slow, and unreliable.
The whole concept of cloud had made sense back in the days when storage and CPU power was so expensive that only the universities could afford it. So you had at home a relative cheap box to connect to the university computer to run your heavy computations.
For private consumers it just a big disadvantage. For firms it would make some more sense to outsource your I.T. But you should know if it makes sense to make your whole business depended on some second firm in the cloud.
For Google of course it makes perfect sense to push for the cloud. They make their money of advertising and the people's data. So of course they want you to be connected 24/7 to their services and store your data on their servers. But it's just stupid for anyone who do real work with their computer. But for facebook/hulu/youtube people , maybe it's ok if the laptop is so much cheaper. But then Google don't need to invest in the cloud-software stuff like Google Docs.
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You can drastically reduce the call-centre costs by using thin clients and having all the software in the cloud. This is one of the reasons why cloud computing is successful in the corp. world: reduces IT costs.
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I mostly agree with you, but there's one usage case you've skipped over: a home user who has multiple devices. They can't be bothered manually synching them, or setting up a home server. But they want all their personal stuff to be accessible from the little laptop they carry around with them, their big gaming rig at home, and (possibly) their computer at work. Storing their stuff remotely, and accessing it from each platform only as needed, actually kinda makes sense. It'd make more sense if it weren't
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I think you're missing one of the key benefits of Chrome OS - professional-quality device management. That isn't cheap. The difficulty is in convincing the average home user that this is something they need. It probably won't be a hard sell in the corporate world.
Storage certainly is cheap. Backups aren't. Now, the average user addresses this by not making backups.
A computer that can run software is cheap. Keeping malware out isn't. Now, the average user addresses this by simply tolerating malware un
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Talking about bad examples:
"Imagine if for an extra $500 you could have bought plumbing for your house that would never need maintenance, or whose maintenance would be a low fixed cost every few years? Unless you are a professional plumber chances are that would be a good deal. It is the same with Chrome OS - the target is people who don't want to fiddle with their computers, but actually need to create documents/etc (as opposed to the consumption-oriented tablet)."
Yes it would be great if the plumbing is s
Google Gears / HTML5 + Persistent Storage. (Score:2)
hy this push for take it all or nothing for cloud services? Why not lets have your application local, your data local and have synced the data to the cloud? That why you could have the best of the two worlds.
And that's indeed the long term plan. That was the idea behind Google Gears back then (being able to run a web app, offline locally). And that's what is being pushed with HTML5 and the local storage extension (or even the file api). :
It will just take some time untile everything is ported to the technologies and runs smoothly. But that's where development is heading
- You open your ChromeBook, browse to Google Dos, log into it, wait until all the javascript ended up download.
- Now you can disconnect and keep
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Why this push for take it all or nothing for cloud services? Why not lets have your application local, your data local and have synced the data to the cloud? That why you could have the best of the two worlds.
Well, nothing prevents this with html5 - just not many apps are set up that way. However, it is best to have the always-available version be the authoritative one. By always-available I mean available from any computer on the planet and not just available in your living room when your 56k phone line is down (you seem to consider broadband a non-starter).
No your data in the cloud is not protected at all. My data at home is at least protected because it's local in my home. In my home I have a whole bunch of protection, from thieves and from the police. In the cloud you have no rights at all, nothing, none. All you have is a promise by the cloud company that your data is "save". But neither you can sue the company if it's not save nor you have any special rights of privacy.
Ok, when you talk data security, you need to talk about threat models. It seems like your main threat model is Uncle Sam trying to bust your stash or som
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The Chrome web app store is a success and growing. I see Chrome OS having a chance as a result. But there are problems with that - most of the "Apps" don't amount to much more than a bookmark to a website, such as the Facebook app. Things are going to have to change for chrome to get any success.
The challenge is convincing consumers that the Chromebook on the shelf next to the cheaper netbook is a better buy than something that can run a fu
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What's a good example of something in the store that is more than a bookmark? I really have a hard time seeing the web app store as anything more than something like what Yahoo was in the early days - a directory.
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I searched for an answer to this question and this is the best like I could find:
http://lifehacker.com/5708613/the-five-best-chrome-webapps-that-arent-just-bookmarks [lifehacker.com]
After reading this, I still don't see anything that differentiates a web app from the store from a web app accessible from a bookmark. It seems like an arbitrary distinction.
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src:kit requires Chrome, and installs a custom chrome extension when you install it from the web store. I'm not saying it couldn't be done without pure html/javascript, but the actual implementation does include an "install". This is probably to get around javascript sandbox issues with accessing dropbox.
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Well this is weird. I've never heard of src:kit so I tried to Google for it and it matched zero documents. Tried the same search string in Bing and found https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/iieeldjdihkpoapgipfkeoddjckopgjg [google.com]. Seems a bit embarrassing for Google that their search engine wasn't able to locate this and Bing was able.
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BTW, thanks for posting to this. I installed it and I think it's the first Chrome web app that has really impressed me.
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Yes. The problem is that google is used to try everything a little and if it works for making money for them right now, they cherry-pick it. If you usea google product still in beta, you can be sure that *if* it is canned they won be interested in making a product where people would pay some money for (e.g. i would have imagined that paid google wave hosting for companies could have worked), but they decide to confine the ecosystem to what they know works already.
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I think you're wrong.
Android thrives on the fact for OEMs, it's free as in beer. Not only is it free as it beer, so is it's support.
While that alone isn't enough to ensure success, the fact that it is slick ss hell.
Also, most people won't even bother breaking out their net books unless they've got internet access.
As long as Google can convince OEMs that Chrome OS is worth it, it will survive. It won't be number one by a long shot, but I think it'll make a really nice dent.
What i am concerned with is if Chro
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Android is Google's best bet: I see more of a future for Android netbooks, and a lot more for the tablets, than for ChromeOS. I am not a betting type by nature, but I would bet good money that 2012 will be the last year that a netbook ships with ChromeOS. They'll take what works and stick it into Android's built-in browser.
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I think Chromebook & ChromeOS can work, but only for a specific subset of people. A web-only netbook is interesting to me, and while I didn't make it into the Cr-48 pilot, I looked into how to build one on my own [blogspot.com] based on what I saw in Chromebook & ChromeOS. Having actually built such a thing (Note: it's easier with Firefox and Openbox, than with Chrome) I can talk a little about a web-only netbook.
If all you need to do is access email, browse the web, maybe write some short docs and manage a few ho
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For me, the Google eco-system's permanent beta cripples it and ensures the longevity of its competitors. The issues for me? After all these years, there is no bibliography / citation management system for Google Docs that works in the cloud (at least nothing that could work with a Chromebook.) And, you can't define styles in Google docs.
These are unfortunate characteristics but not deal-breakers for the average user.
The absence of offline mode - the deprecation of Gears without implementing a replacement - was another disaster.
A problem which will will allegedly be fixed soon if it isn't already in this latest release.
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Ultimately, this should have been a bid for a category of "high-end cloud-user." The average user has moved on from netbooks to tablets, or simply smartphones. Like I said, they solved a problem that meant more 4 years ago than it does now.
I think, too, your presumption about the "average user" is a little incorrect (it is clear that Google does little research into user profiles or markets) - generally, most users have one or two activities which actually require rich apps, even if that is only 10% of thei
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also, there's a lot of other products too, orkut, jaiku etc. to the list. so it's no wonder they have to cut some stuff when they use money like that.
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all these years, all those 'genius' people at google and what - they can't really do all that much in the real world, can they? quite a lot of google was a flop. for such 'smart guys' there, I'm not all that impressed with their ability to DELIVER a good product.
I've said this before, google is WAY OFF in their hiring. they need more down to earth programmers. a company full of geniuses is never going to do more than make a few 'wow' concepts but that's about it.
I recently bought an android tablet (my f
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Talking about the cloud, here is today's XKCD [xkcd.com]. Enjoy.
Disappointing specs (Score:1)
a 1.3ghz processor and 1 GB ram? Not really good, more so with the horrid battery life of only 3.5 hours :(
I have a better notebook already, so I can't find a reason to want this.
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http://netbooked.net/blog/arm-vs-atom-size-vs-power-vs-performance/ [netbooked.net]
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Not only this, but they want $440 for that thing.
I've no idea what the market is supposed to be for it. For $500, you can get [amazon.com] a dual-core Atom with 2Gb RAM and Nvidia ION (which means very decent graphics/video perf) running Win7 - in which you can run Chrome, so it's just as full-featured. And get twice as long battery life.
Or you can get a cheapo bottom of the barrel netbook for $250, which will likely still be powerful enough for anything you could do on a Chromebook...
Can I install Linux on that? (Score:3, Interesting)
The real question is if I can install some real Linux on it, or is it locked down?
""even if you lose your computer, you can just log in to another Kogan Agora Chromium Laptop and get right back to work."
Yeah right, as if you always have a top DSL connection everywhere. And if you loose your connection are you loosing any data, too?
With Linux it's just so easy to backup your data. Because in Linux everything is just a file, you can use the simple tools like rsync or dd. Or just open a file manager and copy your whole system to some hard disk. Trust me it works. Take a laptop, with the same system, and just copy /home to some external hard disk. Then copy it back to the new laptop and you have all settings and all data on your new laptop. No magic "cloud" is needed. You can even just copy your whole system to the new computer and you don't need to install anything on the new laptop.
I still think the whole "cloud for private people" is just a scam for your money so that you need always either expensive DSL connection at home or G3 or UMTS for your laptop. The idea is, even if you use your laptop, with they have now plenty of data capacity for very cheap (like 500GB for 50$) you still need a constant internet connection either with wireless or G3/UMTS.
Re:Can I install Linux on that? (Score:4, Interesting)
The real question is if I can install some real Linux on it, or is it locked down?
""even if you lose your computer, you can just log in to another Kogan Agora Chromium Laptop and get right back to work."
Yeah right, as if you always have a top DSL connection everywhere. And if you loose your connection are you loosing any data, too?
No because the data is all the the cloud. At most you lose (not loose) a few seconds of work typing in a Google Doc for instance. See the many youtube videos of this in action if you like.
With Linux it's just so easy to backup your data. Because in Linux everything is just a file, you can use the simple tools like rsync or dd. Or just open a file manager and copy your whole system to some hard disk. Trust me it works.
Yes because the majority of computer users know how what rsync or dd are let alone how to use them? I'd guess that 1% or less of computer users these days have ever touched a *nix command line.
Take a laptop, with the same system, and just copy /home to some external hard disk. Then copy it back to the new laptop and you have all settings and all data on your new laptop. No magic "cloud" is needed.
Yes but how many stories do we know of people who didn't back up their laptop, or hadn't done it for months, or people who've lost the laptop and their backups. Why not have the OS do the heavy lifting to protect the users data? This is where the "magic" cloud works. You don't need to find someone tech savvy to spend 4 hours copying all your data back and reinstalling your applications. You kind of just log in and you have it all back.
Because if you are an IT guy, chances are you've done that for your friends and family. I can see how a Chromebook would see my aging parents calling on me less.
You can even just copy your whole system to the new computer and you don't need to install anything on the new laptop.
I still think the whole "cloud for private people" is just a scam for your money so that you need always either expensive DSL connection at home or G3 or UMTS for your laptop. The idea is, even if you use your laptop, with they have now plenty of data capacity for very cheap (like 500GB for 50$) you still need a constant internet connection either with wireless or G3/UMTS.
No the scam is around getting you hooked to online services so advertisers can target you better. When your offline doing something on your computer, you're not so reachable. Get your conspiracy theories straight! Geez. ;)
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"Yes because the majority of computer users know how what rsync or dd are let alone how to use them? I'd guess that 1% or less of computer users these days have ever touched a *nix command line."
Did you missed my part about open a file manager? Open file manager and drag&drop the files to an external hard disk. They are cost like 50$ for 500GB. There are also a lot of backup/synchronization GUI applications.
"This is where the "magic" cloud works."
Except if it doesn't. Like if your internet connection is
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I'd argue that the chances of Google Docs being down are much lower than the chances that Aunt Edna forgot to drag-and-drop her files to the remote hard drive and then put it in a safe deposit box within the last six months (if it isn't offsite it isn't secure). Plus, if Google Docs is down chances are the fix is to wait for 20 minutes. If Aunt Edna forgot to back up the last year's worth of files she's SOL.
And, if you don't trust Google you can always download your docs periodically - I do that. They're
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Aunt Edna? What happened to Aunt Tilly?? Is she a full-fledged Linux user by now?
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No because the data is all the the cloud. At most you lose (not loose) a few seconds of work typing in a Google Doc for instance. See the many youtube videos of this in action if you like.
You do, however, lose access to your documents.
Yes because the majority of computer users know how what rsync or dd are let alone how to use them? I'd guess that 1% or less of computer users these days have ever touched a *nix command line.
Using Linux as an example of easy backup was probably a bad idea. OS X and WIndows, however, do make it dead simple these days. Time Machine, for example, works with no configuration. You just plug in an external drive and it asks you if you want to use it for backup. Done.
I can see how a Chromebook would see my aging parents calling on me less.
Sure, but it is kind of selfish, don't you think? You're saving yourself a headache by crippling their user experience.
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The real question is if I can install some real Linux on it, or is it locked down?
As I understand it, Chrome OS isn't really Linux under the hood. It has a modified Linux kernel, but that's about it. And it doesn't run X11, so no, you can't really run Linux apps. It is locked down. That's what makes the thing such a freakin' joke. Buy a Netbook with a real Linux distribution installed if you want more than a browser.
Yeah right, as if you always have a top DSL connection everywhere. And if you loose your connection are you loosing any data, too?
Yes, that's exactly what it means.
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""even if you lose your computer, you can just log in to another Kogan Agora Chromium Laptop and get right back to work."
Yeah right, as if you always have a top DSL connection everywhere. And if you loose your connection are you loosing any data, too?
No. What differentiates Chrome OS from Linux plus Chrome, assuming they have actually got to this stage, is an offline mode enabled by some sort of local file access available to applications. Probably it requires a valid electronic signature to use it, although we all know how secure that ultimately can be. Ask Sony. The point is that you don't lose access to your documents, or at least, one day you won't. If Google can be believed, which I think they mostly can. That is different from trusted :)
Feature Complete? (Score:1)
Case in point: 3G coverage. I live in a 3G available O2 area (according to their map of said coverage) and indeed in my car park my phone connects without difficulty. Walk inside and it's a different story altogether. I have Wi-Fi access, but in a huge numb
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Australian manufacturer? (Score:4, Informative)
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I didn't think it was too bad; indeed our normal 3G seems to run at the USA's "4G" speed: I often download Ubuntu updates to my netbook at over 700KB/s sustained when sitting on the train (Optus 3G), for example. When the NBN comes online this can all only go up: more fibre backhaul for LTE and other new technologies. Not to mention the possibility of gigabit fibre in your own premises!
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I didn't think it was too bad; indeed our normal 3G seems to run at the USA's "4G" speed: I often download Ubuntu updates to my netbook at over 700KB/s sustained
In Jacksonville, FL, I just tested my Motorola Droid and got a 111ms ping, and 972KBps which is just short of a Megabyte. 4G speeds, i.e., LTE, are much faster. [blogcdn.com]
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'fraid not. Kogan is an Australian brand name, sure enough, but all of the manufacturing happens through third parties in China. Kogan manufactures about as much in Australia as Apple does in the United States.
One big exception there, mate,
Unlike Apple in the US, Kogan in Australia pays tax.
Tiny Battery Life (Score:1)
With the windows key and the terrible battery I'm thinking someone just wanted to jump on the chromebook buzz as of late and shift some poor performing computers.
On a totally unrelated note I don't like the idea of chromebooks at all
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So what they have here is a netbook with low specs, low storage, extremely poor battery life and requires you to have constant internet access to be usable, hmmmmm yeah I can see those simply flying of the shelves.
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I might be spoiled in the fact my netbook has around 13 hour life
Out of curiosity, what's the netbook in question?
No, they didn't. (Score:2)
As a CR-48 owner, I received an e-mail from Google last week with the option to purchase a Samsung ChromeBook last Wednesday that was due to start shipping today.
Until Google comes up with a better solution for printing than what they're offering now [google.com], and actually releases the Citrix connector and offline versions of Docs, Calendar and Mail, I'll pass.
Okay, at home I can live with the Google Cloud Print bit because I almost never print. But considering it for an office solution is a freaking joke.
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Agreed, unless they start offering cheap printer servers that just plug into your LAN or whatever, or get printer manufacturers to include cloud print clients. Their solution isn't actually a bad one per-se, but they haven't really executed on it.
Crippleware for crippled hardware (Score:2)
Never mind the OS, what about the applications? Can I run OpenOffice/LibreOffice/MS Office? Can I run Mathematica/Maple/Mathcad/Sage?
Why are we constantly pandering for crappy hardware like Atom processors and limited RAM?
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Well, it isn't so much that it doesn't run applications so much as it doesn't run anything but Chrome applications - with a much more limited API. In some sense complaining that it doesn't run Openoffice is like complaining that Ubuntu doesn't run Internet Explorer. That said, if you need to run Internet Explorer for whatever reason neither Ubuntu nor Chrome OS is going to be suitable, and that argument hits Chrome even harder.
Google is basically trying to rethink the entire desktop paradigm. Limiting th
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Well, it isn't so much that it doesn't run applications so much as it doesn't run anything but Chrome applications - with a much more limited API. In some sense complaining that it doesn't run Openoffice is like complaining that Ubuntu doesn't run Internet Explorer. That said, if you need to run Internet Explorer for whatever reason neither Ubuntu nor Chrome OS is going to be suitable, and that argument hits Chrome even harder.
But you can run Internet Explorer on Linux. Either through Wine (I have no idea if this is actually possible currently) or under virtualization. I do it all the time on the Mac. You just can't run it naively.
Google is basically trying to rethink the entire desktop paradigm.
Either that or they can't see past the browser. Maybe they're just short sighted and don't really get how people use computers. Though I suppose there's always going to be SOMEONE who can get by using only a web browser. It is just that I don't see why anyone would voluntarily limit themselves like that
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Either that or they can't see past the browser. Maybe they're just short sighted and don't really get how people use computers.
Well, to me it seems more that they are trying to change how people use their computers.
Limiting the ability to run arbitrary X11 apps greatly cuts down on the number of possible exploits possible.
In theory, maybe, but in practice it doesn't matter. Especially with the kind of strict package management using signatures that Linux uses.
I'm not aware of any common desktop distro that:
1. Detects any rootkit install and refuses to boot.
2. Keeps all executables on a read-only partition making that rootkit almost impossible to install anyway.
Sure, some of this is possible with some combination of trusted Grub and SELinux. However, again no distro I'm aware of does this and most linux software would need heavy patching/repackaging to work in a heavily man
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Well, to me it seems more that they are trying to change how people use their computers.
Clearly, but to nobody's benefit but their own.
Sure, some of this is possible with some combination of trusted Grub and SELinux. However, again no distro I'm aware of does this and most linux software would need heavy patching/repackaging to work in a heavily managed environment (say where it can't read/write arbitrary files in $HOME or whatever). Package manager signatures only ensure that known-good copies of software gets installed by the package manager. They don't keep users from inadvertently installing/running arbitrary code. They usually don't detect modifications to files after installation either.
But none of that has proven to be a real problem in Linux. It is certainly not worth scrapping the whole idea of a desktop OS and crippling people's user experience by forcing them to do everything inside a browser. Nobody is going to buy that argument, at least. Try telling the average user that they can't use their favorite desktop app because there some remote chance that installing it they might get malware on their system
I'll agree that cloud solutions right now are weak compared to professional-level desktop solutions. I suspect that we'll see that improve if the concept takes off. I think that the issue here is that Google is dabbling with the concept but hasn't gone all-in.
Not just professional level deskt
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I'll agree that cloud solutions right now are weak compared to professional-level desktop solutions. I suspect that we'll see that improve if the concept takes off. I think that the issue here is that Google is dabbling with the concept but hasn't gone all-in.
Not just professional level desktop solutions. I would say that we apps are not even up to consumer level standards. What it comes down to is that the web is just not designed to support that kind of applications that people are trying to build. HTML5 will help, but I think it will still be quite limited. For one thing, the browser is a big sandbox for security reasons. You cannot utilize local hardware and applications can't talk to each other like they can on desktops.
Sure browser-based apps can interact. If you'd like your Facebook page to interact with your Gmail page then Facebook merely needs to make a connection to the Gmail servers on the SERVER side to implement the interaction. What is missing is some way to make this more standard so that we're not talking about a bazillion point-to-point links without a common standard. How does app A know that it might be able to share data with app B?
As you point out that brower runs in a sandbox for security reasons. Goo
VGA ports. (Score:1)
Please stop using them.
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Yes because we cant protect our precious content because it lacks DRM.
VGA is fine And can do 1080p, it's the whiny bitches that dont like it.
In fact I cant find one person that can tell the difference between a clean VGA source and the same video on a HDMI source.
Dont want any of those... (Score:2)
I want the exact hardware that is the current beta testing Chrome laptops.
I have played with one and it's far superior in design than the junk that Samsung and Acer are coming out with. Why cant they release that exact one?
Noy ARM (Score:2)
I'm not nearly as excited about an x86 implementation as I would be about an ARM implementation.
Specs... (Score:1)