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First Chrome OS Notebooks Due This Month
adeelarshad82 writes "According to recent reports, a Google-branded Chrome OS notebook will be launched by Inventec later this month. Acer and HP will be launching theirs a month later, in December. This report is also backed by a source close to Google stating that the company is still on track to launch its Chrome OS by the end of the year, as well as its Chrome app store."
So, this Taiwan-based company gets their product to market first, before acer and hp. I wonder why?
This is going to go straight for Microsoft's jugular.
Apple has pretty well innoculated themselves with a strong tablet (touch) and ultralight notebook (full OS) offerings.
If this comes with net access it will pretty much eat up the remaining netbook fervor.
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I've got a Nexus One and i'm quite happy with it, but i have no interest in a Chrome OS device in any format, notebook, netbook, tablet or anything else. The cloud can be convenient i'm sure, but i'm not enamored of an entire OS designed around the idea. I do not want to be dependent on internet access to run my apps and access my data.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I don't think they're going to compete with Microsoft. But what they are doing is trying to invent a new class of computing device, which I think is going to fail. Maybe in another ten years having a constant internet connection will be a given, but right now... I'm just imagining people trying to type a document while riding on the subway: "Whoops, lost my internet. Oh, it's back again... let me re-open my session..."
I'm not sure Chrome OS will be a big success, but I think Google would have taken such connectivity issues into consideration.
I'm not sure why they have both Android and Chrome OS -- they seem to intersect and overlap awkwardly.
I'm really hoping that this thing is super cheap. That's the only way I can really justify something that has so little capability. Some of my primary use cases - handling photos, video, etc. are just not well suited for non-native applications right now. So this would really truly be a limited device. However if the price was right - and I'm talking max $150, preferably $99 - I could really go for it. As in, I'd have them all over the house, just for convenience. But if this thing costs $300 or more then it's in iPad territory and there's just zero reason to buy it over an iPad.
You would think so, but then again, there are a huge number of people that think that pro-privacy things like NoScript are stupid on this website. Google-analytics isn't blocked by AdBlock or FlashBlock, but whatever. Those that set it in hosts are excluded from this sentiment, but I don't think that is too big of a percentage.
Gears or HTML5 allow for offline use of apps that will sync with the cloud once reconnected. Gears has been used in google docs for years.
To me the advantage of Chrome OS is an easy, cheap, secure computer. It would be great for my parents who seem to get a incredible amount of viruses just from browsing the web. Granted it wont replace their current PC.
Hi,
As somebody who just lost a bunch of data due to faulty backup disks, I for one welcome this.
I've yet to lose data stored on Google's cloud *touch wood*...lol.
Having data in the cloud, as well as cached/accessible locally seems like the best option. And to those talking about going underground on a train, I'm fairly sure Google's accounted for that - either through Gears, HTML5 Local Storage, or another local caching mechanism. I have a Google Nexus One, when I'm underground, I can still access all my email (that's been synced), my contacts, my calendar etc.
And having all my contacts synced online, along with all my Google Talk logs, is *awesome*. I'm a bit anal-retentive when it comes to storing things, so knowing that it's all stored, and available, and won't get lost due to filesystem corruption or something equally idiotic is good news to me. And look, worst come to worst, I lose my phone (hopefully not...lol) I'll get another, login to my Google Account, and voila, everything is synced again.
And people seem to over-value their privacy, at least to corporations. Seriously, most of you are pathetically mundane. I for one am not so insecure that I can't admit I am too. I mean, jeez, trawling through my personal emails you get...err...a bunch of emails between me and mates talking about work, me arranging lunch with my parents, and me buying stuff on eBay. Big whoop de doo. I'm happy to admit I'm a fairly boring individual, and I'm sure statistically I just fade into the background. If I was the Pope, or Jason Bourne, or I was trying to overthrow the Australian government, I suppose I might think differently. But as it is, I'm just another random guy. I doubt anybody at Google really cares, except to display targeted advertising.
The government spying on me, yeah, I have issues on that. Serious issues. A teacher at uni. Absolutely. A colleague, sure. People I know IRL, yeah. Heck, if this was Sony even, I'd have issues, seeing as they're a bunch of immoral corporates, who have no qualms about installing malware on consumer's PCs (I bought into MiniDisc ok...lol, I have a right to be bitter). But some analytical algorithm, trying to figure out which ads I'll click on? Pftt, who cares.
Google has tried to hide what they do - they display targeted ads. It's not like they've every tried to cover that fact up, nor have they been really been caught out on a privacy breach. (I'm going to discount the technical incompetent idiots who don't understand what unencrypted wireless communication is, or who can't be bothered to read what they're clicking on before they click it, a la Buzz).
They also freely list all the data they store on you:
https://www.google.com/dashboard
And they also don't try to lock you in to their system - they provide open exports from most of their systems.
http://www.dataliberation.org/
I find that really awesome, and a refreshing change from every other corporation that tries to lock you in, hand over foot. It also speaks volumes about their confience - they're confident enough in the technical superiority of their solutison, that they dont' ened to resort to lock-in to try to desperately cling onto their customers.
Cheers,
Victor
...will keep your google document alive offline today.
If battery life approaches or exceeds iPad and current netbook class while providing instant-on and a keyboard, it will sell.
I don't WANT windows and all it's security issues and bulk for lightweight browsing, and I'd like a keyboard sometimes (which the iPad doesn't have).
At the right price, this will make a value proposition that takes the base of netbooks
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I for one welcome a 4th operating system on the market. Sure took long enough. (I know I know, some people are going to say "what about VMS? I still use it", etc.)
No, without any native app support, it's going to be unusable long before the cloud goes away. :-D
And it's not a tablet. It's a notebook.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Google (google gears) and Mozilla (prism?) experimented with such a offline layer some time ago for normal browsers, and such a offline cache is part of the HTML5 spec. They have also included a file manager and media player, iirc.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Every time there's a Slashdot post about ChromeOS there's immediately a rush of posts complaining that it won't work offline.
Slashdot is supposed to be news for nerds, not recent history for nerds ... but SOME OF YOU GUYS ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION. Listen up.
This is not 1999. You can come out of your bunker now.
Google introduced offline Web functionality in in 2007. Google Docs supported Google Gears, which made it possible to use the Google word processor on an airplane with no network connection at all. I've done it. It worked fine. When I reconnected, everything synchronized with the cloud.
This concept has been reworked and is a part of the HTML5 standard. See http://www.w3.org/TR/offline-webapps/
In 2010-2011, you can write highly functional applications using HTML5 and Javascript, make them installable on your web browser, and have them work offline. Please stop assuming the Web is as it was when you were in junior high.
The market is all those people who only use Gmail and Facebook anyway and whose tech savvy relatives are tired of fixing their malware ridden Windows installations.
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the real story here is that there are going to FINALLY be ARM netbooks for sale!
now if only they could get the sense to make a full laptop with them.
"A Google-branded Chrome OS notebook will be launched by Inventec, with Acer and Hewlett-Packard following suit thereafter, according to a report."
It's Google branded, meaning Google probably chose that manufacturer for launch devices. With the run in the mid-tens of thousands, it seems to be a kick start for the platform, not a major brand.
Maybe if someone SRWare Irons out the Google spyware, I might consider one.
Sadly, this is almost certainly doomed to failure like every smartbook preceding it.
It's true, though. If you have nothing to hide, privacy is a total non-issue.
The problem is everyone has something to hide: passwords, bank details, religious views in certain contexts, genitalia, their company's trade secrets etc.
We have a large local organisation that has been a rock-solid windows shop for ever. I've occasionally had dealings with their IT manager, and never got any interest in moving to linux. So I just about fell over when he told me he was planning to switch as many workstations as possible to ChromeOS and Google Docs as soon as it comes out.
This is just one sample of course. But if a conservative Windows-centric organisation is planning to switch so immediately, it doesn't bode well for MS's revenue backbone - all those corporate workstations running windows and office. A switch to ChromeOS would be disruptive, but not much more so than the Windows 7 upgrade that must be on 75% of IT managers' todo lists next year.
Don't get me wrong, MS will be around for years and years, but I think their Silverlight/HTML5 announcement shows they've recognised their supremacy is over and they can't assume everyone runs Windows any more. Interesting times ahead.
Do as you would be done to.
The way I see this is this is a business play. For a consumer like me, a castrated variant of a laptop I already own is not particularly exciting to me. As a small business, if I use Google Apps, this would be a huge money saver. You basically don't have to do much (if any) IT if you have this. Your data is always backed up. Your laptops never have any upgrade or virus issues - they upgrade themselves and system partition is read-only. You have endless amount of space for docs and email, and pretty decent collaboration features which will only get better over time. So for a business that can cope with the current limitations of Google Apps, there's quite a bit of value in ChromeOS.
you might be surprised to learn that keeping these things private online is much the same as keeping them private offline.
the problem is that people seem to be more free with their private details online than offline, maybe due to some flawed feeling of anonymity?
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
I believe the people you refer to are those who "have a life". Sure, people who dont know how to use computers well may be more likely to get viruses etc, but is it really their fault - considering it was computer geeks who originally wrote the buggy software...and other computer geeks writing the malware...??
If you think shutting ourselves up in a cave is the way forward for humankind in the modern tech era, then good for you.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
How did this get promoted?
Probably as a test for html5 offline mode.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
From January, The comment is here.
Google is selling this phone because it advances the technology and their phone partners wouldn't sell it. Expect them to sell an Android + Snapdragon slate for the same reasons.... I doubt Google even wants to sell phones - I think they just want to get the new good technologies adopted so that people can get used to Internet everywhere quicker. This serves their bottom line because when most people use the Internet they use Google services, which Google sells ads on. You can't very well sell Internet ads to be viewed by people who aren't close to a browser. [me]
It links to this interesting article where the CEO of Asus was backing away from the Android smartbook they had recently pulled in mid-computex.
"Currently, I still don't see a clear market for smartbooks," said Jerry Shen, CEO of Asustek Computer, during an investors' conference in Taipei.
So he pulls the Linux Snapdragon smartbook and shows up a few days later at an investors conference - just before the W7 launch - flanked by reps from Microsoft and Intel - probably glancing cautiously from one to the other hoping nothing bad happens to his precious W7 netbooks (little does he know...). And he gives a carefully prepared speech about how Intel and Microsoft are going to crush their enemies, see them driven before them, hear the lamentation of their women...
And now world & dog sees Microsoft as a fading power, Apple mobile platforms - and mobile platforms in general - as the next generation of user interface, and suddenly now he sees a future in it again. Intel is driving as hard as they can to be the thing that gives people what they want. Microsoft? Let's just say the KIN didn't work out and WP7 has a steeper hill to climb than it might have. What a difference a year makes.
I love my Samsung Epic Android phone, but obviously I know I would not have any such thing if both Apple and Google had not dared to bring us change, each in their own way.
That article was about Google's Nexus 1 phones. Remember that Google shopped its candybar phone to every phone vendor and they wouldn't take it, so Google made it, sold a grip of them, and ushered in all this sweet tech we enjoy today. If they had not done so when they did, we'd not have seen the first good big-screen Android platforms until after WP7 launched, if ever. And now those phones are selling 20M units a quarter in the US alone, giving 44% market share, driving every phone vendor that builds it into profitability or record profitability, giving US non-AT&T networks a phone to sell that isn't absolutely pathetic, and putting money in the pockets of a vast economy of app developers and advertising buyers (and of course, Google).
The message is pretty clear. If Google gives you a reference platform, Run With It! Refusing is not going to keep them from bringing new tech to market. They don't want the manufacturing and retail money because they want to leave that business to their partners. It's a messy customer service business with low leverage. It's not their strong point. But if their partners won't give us progress, they aren't averse to bringing it directly and reaping a few billion in hardware revenue along the way. Microsoft and Intel used to be able to prevent progress, to prevent "cannabilization" of their established markets. But now those days are done. Vendors used to be able to hold off the releases with "tomorrow, tommorow" and "any day now". Any more? No. That's not going to fly. We'll have progress now whether the established hardware vendors are ready to give it or not. There will be no stalling any more.
/this is me agreeing with you.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm sorry, you must be confused. This is Slashdot. We only tolerate one of any sort of device for all uses. Therefore, if a web-browsing only netbook appears, that means that all computers henceforth will be just like this. Gone are the days of building your own PC, running an OS of your choosing. All computers will be running ChromeOS by the end of the year. So, let's pile on with a thousand and one use cases where this device isn't appropriate. Only then can we stop it and maintain the status quo in computers.
Let's see. Astronauts. I don't see astronauts flipping around in space using ChromeOS. If the ISS were run on ChromeOS, everybody on board would be dead in three seconds. Antarcticians. Last I checked, there wasn't very fast broadband available on Antarctica. ChromeOS cannot overtake the industry until they get FIOS to the penguins down south. My great-grandma in the ICU on a ventilator can't be checking her Facebooks with this thing. They don't even want me to wear a watch in the room with her! Clearly, ChromeOS just isn't ready for primetime. Until they resolve these and many other ridiculous things I can come up, nobody should touch it. Please, for the sake of my gram-gram, don't go near ChromeOS.
It seems that half of Slashdot would have no problem with Google taking over the world as long as their mind control servers were running Linux.
Isn't that ActiveX redux?
Comments like this getting modded to 5 show the general ignorance of slashdotters. First, you've never seen the device so you have no idea how it will work. Second, even if it were web service based, Google has already released apps and software components (e.g. gears) that work without connectivity. It's called synching folks
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
I for one welcome a 4th operating system on the market. Sure took long enough. (I know I know, some people are going to say "what about VMS? I still use it", etc.)
I'm holding out for the HURD notebook