Slashdot Mirror
Update Brings Android USB Mounting To Chromebooks
sfcrazy writes "Google has updated its stable channel for Chromebooks (Acer AC700, Samsung Series 5, and Cr-48). The latest version of Google chrome running on these devices is Chrome 13. The feature has added Google Cloud Print settings to Settings > Under the Hood. It now allows auto-connect using 3G, remove/forget added VPN connections and 802.1x support. The update brings the most needed feature — USB mounting of Android."
How else do you propose to quickly move your upskirt shots to on to a better medium for superior viewing?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Seems obvious to us geeks, but when a photographer at a christening I went to recently asked if anyone was a "computer expert" so he could give them the CompactFlash card to transfer the pictures no-one wanted to touch it. Syncing,as opposed to just exposing the device as a filesystem, is a better solution if you are going for mass appeal.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Probably Google just planned and actually started to develop something without doing a market research, everybody knows that you just have to have a blowjob in the morning to get to the office and say "hey, lets do an operating system thats in the cloudz trololololol" and everyone is "yay let's do it! for the lulz" and then it's magically delivered inside a custom laptop thanks to pounds of unicorn dust stolen from Cupertino. /s
In all seriousness: Let's say We have a translation team which need to access a webapp to manage and translate stuff and it sucks because it's a poorly build and expensive licensed webapp -IE6 only shit level- that usually fails on the ultra secure WinXP... So What do we do? Oh right migrate to have Google docs accounts and the team can now work in groups if they need to. Calendar and communications integrated in the google accounts fixed and managed w/out a CS PhD IT Preventor in the way.
Why would they need a full laptop with Windows or OS X or Linux? Really? Is not hard to find lots of workflows that don't need anything else than a webbrowser, docs and IM.
ChromeOS is probably the most underrated Google project because is the only thing that can ACTUALLY bite Microsoft in the butchecks. Hope they don't let it die.
Because you don't want to patch Outlook on a distributed fleet of 700 salesmen's laptops?
Chromebooks aren't about the hardware. It's entirely about the software and the support. Look how many people are already using Google Docs. Now imagine if you're a major clothing designer. You're not a tech company, why should you invest so heavily in tech? Use IT like a service, like power or water, to get your job done.
---
You are not what you own -- Fugazi, "Merchandise"
Google provides support?
Seriously, though, what happens when Google patches 700 salesmen's laptops at an inopportune time? According to the documentation,
What? Google expects "customers with complex IT environments" to "familiarize themselves with new features using a test domain, educate support staff, and communicate any changes to their users" in a week?
Google clearly has a rather superficial sense of familiarization in mind. Moreover, what sort of users, other than "IT people with nothing more interesting to do," would want to rely on a perfectly satisfactory tool to change on a weekly basis? Is it conceivable that Google's idea of "customer satistfaction" is akin to "boiling a frog"?
Perhaps Google Apps' target market is people who want an excuse to avoid taking the time to learn how to use their tools and companies who want an excuse to avoid training?
It's the market which has one or more laptops only used for websurfing. You know, like most people who have a laptop today. I guess it's weird to serve "most people" when you could serve a niche. No, wait, that's not weird at all. You are.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
On the other hand if it is changing on a weekly basis, them many times there will be no new features to familiarize yourself with, or there will be only one or two small features. One person could spend an hour or two testing in those cases. (If nobody can afford that, then the company should have hired another person for IT prior to rolling out the chrome-book, especially since the rollout process could easily monopolize the time of a member of IT for several weeks.
Educating support staff on an invisible bug fix consists of doing exactly nothing. For small features, it may also consist of extremely little.
Communicating changes to end users should always be even less involved than educating the support staff. Basically an extremely high level overview like "You can now plug your Android phones/tablets into the chrome-book and see the files on it" should be enough. Those afraid to experiment can ask support for more details.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524