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Kogan Beats Samsung and Acer With World's First Chrome OS Laptop
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."
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, surely the OSes have to be?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
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.
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.
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 reasons:
1) Prevent "vendor lockout". (eliminate dependence on competitor-supplied products)
2) Upgrade client side technology. (allowing a better web application experience)
Hivemind harvest in progress..
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.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
ChromeOS and Chrome and Andriod are here for two reasons:
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)
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
'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.
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.
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.