Friday, November 20, 2009
First look at Chrome OS
Google offered a first look at the Google Chrome operating system, forthcoming in about a year. This OS is intended for special hardware netbooks, which means the OS can leave out a lot of the usual boot-up checks and processes, resulting in very short boot times. As the Chrome browser is totally integrated in the OS, it benefits from being able to use more computing power for web browsing and watching videos, for instance.
According to Google, "every application is a web application. There are no conventional applications. (Whatever you use), it's a webapp, it's a link, it's a URL." So that means without an internet connection, your PC is dead. But with a connection, all user settings for all applications and for the whole OS are loaded from the remotely stored server (so different users can use the same netbook with all their customizations intact and always synchronized).
I'm kind of warming to this concept of "cloud computing", at least for all the instances where you are on the road and presumably still able to access all your settings, files, accounts, and everything. Let's see if it will really be possible to work with a "crippled" (i. e. online-only) operating system.
First Glimpse at Google Chrome OS - Google Chrome OS - Lifehacker
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Having bought a Droid or rather Google, phone, I am now convinced I want as little to do with Google as possible.
ReplyDeleteIt took me about 2 hrs, but I finally disentangled it from using ANY Google services, and here's why I decided to get out of their cloud/dataworld.
Man, it comes preconfigured to send your mail through Gmail, report your GPS position to
"Google Latitude", broadcast that to friends, index your phone's data and send that to
Goog, store all your contact data on Goog, backup the phone to Goog. Record your driving
directions and issue StreetView pictures of your route as you drive via Google Maps.
Pass your SMS traffic through them, Google Voice records all numbers calling/called going
in/out, does speech to text on your vmail messages, emails vmail to you and of course
indexes that and so on.
Big Brother has arrived.
Indeed, that would be my biggest concern when using any of these services by Google (or Apple's me.com too, by the way). Here's hoping that if the concept actually works, there's will be free alternatives that will be just as easy to use, but created by enthusiasts on the net, not a blockbuster company.
ReplyDelete