The Fixes That Google Chrome OS Still Needs To Make

CowboyRobot writes "Thomas Claburn at Information Week opines that Google's Chrome OS is actually morphing into the Windows-style os that it intended to make obsolete. There's still room to grow, and here are his suggestions for how to make it better: Get better hardware, Include a Web-based IDE, Support local storage, Allow offline apps. 'When Chrome OS was launched in 2010, Google SVP of Chrome and apps Sundar Pichai declared, "Chrome OS is nothing but the Web." Now, if you peer behind the browser pane, it's clear that Chrome OS is looking beyond the Web. It's not a complete repudiation of Google's bet on the appeal of a thin-client system that keeps user data in the cloud. But it is a concession to the realities of a market that's more comfortable with the familiar desktop metaphor.'"

Comments

Samba!

[belg4mit]

How else can you reasonably get the many arbitrary documents into Google Docs if you cannot upload them yourself as needed?

http://code.google.com/p/chromium-os/issues/detail?id=2343

Chrome already supports most of that

[The MAZZTer]

Local storage via several APIs (virtual filesystem, SQL database, simple localStorage) and offline apps (HTML5 offline, completely locally installed apps, and recently storing any file on the virtual filesystem was added) are already fully supported. Just because no one is making them doesn't make it Google's fault. There are a few Web based IDEs out there, assuming stuff like Cloud9 and jsFiddle. As for better hardware, Google seems to have already upped the hardware from their initial spec (Cr-48 is not getting Chrome 19, I can only assume it doesn't meet the requirements).

Re:Chrome already supports most of that

[dskzero]

I'd like to try the OS, but it seems redundant. Why would I do so? The only reason Chrome OS would be attractive is if it had a wide range of applications that could be attractive. I think that's the point. (Which is, conversely, the reason why I don't make the complete switch to Linux in all of my boxes: apps)

Re:Chrome already supports most of that

[Rich0]

Wow, the cr-48 is already obsolete? It is only 1.5 years old.

So, is the message that companies shouldn't buy chromebooks unless they want to have an annual hardware replacement cycle? Considering my employer won't replace anything less than 4 years old, and doesn't replace stuff older than that unless it breaks, good luck with that strategy.

These aren't cell phones we're talking about...

Re:Chrome already supports most of that

[Threni]

No, cellphones are completely different - they run Linux, have limited local storage, are overpriced and are obsolete 1.5 years later when the OS stops being supported.

Can't be true

[Anonymous Coward]

The phone fanboys keep telling us that the desktop is dead and we'll all be creating Powerpoint slideshows on a 3" phone screen in future.

Re:Can't be true

[spire3661]

The MOBILE fanboys, i stopped calling it a phone quite some time ago. Smartphones are more computer then phone now. Ive been using the term 'pocket computer', as that is what it really is.

What'd you use to put the document on Samba?

[tepples]

You linked to a feature request for support for the Windows LAN file sharing protocol. Why can't you upload the documents to Google Docs from the machine sharing them or, if it's a headless server, from the machine on which you saved it to the server?

Re:What'd you use to put the document on Samba?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's suppposed to be a computer which one uses to do everything online.
I don't have the resources to upload every file a user wants to work with, or give them
a second computer just for this purpose.

-GP, from another device

Re:What'd you use to put the document on Samba?

[tepples]

Because it's suppposed to be a computer which one uses to do everything online.

SMB works over a LAN. It's not intended to work "online" (that is, over the Internet) except over a VPN.

I don't have the resources to upload every file a user wants to work with

But the user who created the file and put it on the Samba server probably does. Or are we talking about a situation where one set of desktop PC users has access to the Samba server and not the Internet and another set of users has access to the Internet but only through Chrome OS?

Now before anyone accuses me of being a shill, I'm just trying to help triage this feature request to see whether or not there's a viable workaround. If there is, I can remind people of it; if not, I can use it in a stock recommendation against Chrome OS.

Re:What'd you use to put the document on Samba?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Fuck that. 'Scuse the "French".

Google Docs cannot import Word files larger than 1MB!

Yeah, I see this as a viable business alternative. It's pretty pathetic.

Google is great at giving the promise of brilliance to incomplete solutions and those with missing use cases. They gloss this over with a mystique of iterative, agile, dynamic mumbo jumbo.

Look what they've done with Chrome. The horrible version inflation of the industry has been driven by their leading crackpottery. Now we have 2-year-old browsers with double-digit version numbers. "Consumer friendly" identification? Please.

I'll sooner eat my own foot, than get stuck with Google Docs.

Re:What'd you use to put the document on Samba?

[Skuld-Chan]

I actually use Google Apps for Education here at work - it supports docs greater than 1 megabyte...

On samba/cifs/smb - you can map out the g-drive to dfs or directly to a workstation - on a Chromebook I think its a valid feature request.

Re:What'd you use to put the document on Samba?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Maybe natively.

Not Word import - at least not last June, when I went mad over this, for a non-profit I work with.

Re:What'd you use to put the document on Samba?

[Anonymous Coward]

All things NSA/Google/Facebook are spyware. Avoid at all costs.

Re:What'd you use to put the document on Samba?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Yes.

That's the other argument.

Unfortunately, all the Internet is now such a beast.

Re:What'd you use to put the document on Samba?

[ewok85]

Its 2mb now!

And I don't think it is a valid feature request - you need a computer to put a file on a samba share - there is no reason you cannot upload it to docs instead. A file share is only useful while you have access, be it locally on the same network or via a VPN externally. Once its on GDocs it is available from anywhere.

Data capacity of offline apps

[tepples]

Local storage via several APIs (virtual filesystem, SQL database, simple localStorage) and offline apps (HTML5 offline, completely locally installed apps, and recently storing any file on the virtual filesystem was added) are already fully supported.

But how much space is allowed for offline apps and local storage? Can a 100 MB game be installed locally and played offline? Can a 1 GB video be downloaded to local storage and played offline?

Re:Data capacity of offline apps

[Altanar]

My CR-48 has no problems storing and playing large videos. I play an offline version of Angry Birds that's installed onto the computer. Plays Bastion ( http://chrome.supergiantgames.com/ )easily, too, but there's no offline mode for that. As for total storage? The Samsung Series 5 Chromebook has a 16 GB solid state drive. The OS takes up about 300 MB. About total 1 GB total if you add in web cache. At the worst, you have 14 GB free.

Re:Data capacity of offline apps

[Altanar]

Also worth noting: It has a memory card slot that you can use as extra storage. And it supports flash drives.

Re:Data capacity of offline apps

[tepples]

My CR-48 has no problems storing and playing large videos.

Yeah, I was just confused by reports on Stack Overflow of the application cache and local storage under Apple's iOS being limited to 5 MB each, either per origin or per domain (I forget which), and thought this practice was widespread among non-PC Internet terminal platforms such as Android, webOS, and Chrome OS.

Re:Data capacity of offline apps

[Danzigism]

I love the CR-48. However I have mine running FreeBSD-9.0 with Fluxbox. All the hardware surprisingly works. When I had Chrome OS on there, it ran very well. People tend to forget that these things run Linux, so if you want actual programs physically installed to the hard drive, then put the sucker in developer mode and get crankin. However to give this functionality to your average Joe who knows nothing of computers, defeats the entire purpose of these devices. The only people complaining are the savvy users anyway.

No big surprises in the article.

[DuckDodgers]

I think his laundry list of recommended changes is obvious to anyone that's been paying attention.

1. Better hardware. No kidding - right now Chrome OS is aimed at schools and businesses, which if they need a locked down browser environment should be okay with what they have now. But if they want consumer adaptation, offer at least the option of better hardware. I'll buy a Chomebook when I can get Sandy Bridge or a Tegra 4 (yes, I meant 4) processor and a graphics chip that supports at least one external monitor and really good WebGL.

2. Web-based IDE. Again, I think this would spur power user adoption of Chrome OS, though I consider this the least essential of the features.

3. Support local storage. No kidding. It will be a while before HTML5 storage is available at all the websites people routinely use.

4. Offline apps. No kidding yet again. I don't want my device to be useless for my family every time our internet connection has a hiccup.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[mcgrew]

I don't like the "thin client" at all. "Thin clients" used to be called "terminals". We moved away from terminals to PCs for very good reasons, such as if the network or server goes down you can still get work done. You're not beholden to the server's rules.

Lots of IT people like thin clients because it means job security and control of users.

I'll stick with Linux and my own network. The internet and networks in general are for sharing data, nothing more.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Robert Zenz]

I'm all for Thin Clients if they make sense. F.e. if the workstations need to access a database on the server anyway to get work done, you make them Thin Clients in the first place. On the other hand, thin clients are abused on places where they do not belong...and vice versa. I've seen many abuses of workstations, too.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Barbara, not Barbie]

right now Chrome OS is aimed at schools and businesses

Judging from the ultra-lame marketing, it's not aimed at any particular market - it was just another Google "let's throw some more web sh*t at the wall and see if it sticks" experiment. And it's failed.

Schools won't buy them - they weigh almost 3x as much as an iPad, and battery life sucks. And they're more expensive than either the iPad2 or a full-blown laptop, so forget schools.

Businesses? Same deal and then some - add in that not every business wants to trust Google with their internal documents - financial forecasts, marketing plans, internal emails, client price lists, legal consultations, hiring and firing decisions, training manuals, product specs and proprietary formulas. Now throw in that in some fields it's not even legal to share information with any 3rd party because of the types of data involved. Heck, many businesses don't want employees on the web at all during business hours.

So no, take this stupid chromebook, throw a red shirt on it, and have Dr. McCoy come out and say it's dead, already.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Altanar]

The internet and networks in general are for sharing data, nothing more.

Funny. Sharing data is 99% of my computer use. Without the Internet, I might as well not own a computer.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[theurge14]

I'd really like to know how many offices in the year 2012 can "still get work done" without a network connection.

And what's wrong with IT people liking it? Considering the monumental amount of work done putting out fires every day due to user error it affects the company bottom line eventually.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[jeti]

The personal computer was introduced when network infrastructure was typically limited to single buildings. We can now have a fast connection pretty much anywhere, even with mobile devices. Because of that, thin clients / terminals may have become a viable option again.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[zarlino]

Still, it is possible to develop applications that can work offline and sync with a remote server when network connection is available. Many new mobile apps do this. Office software should do it too.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[zarlino]

But you need some time offline to *create* the things that you will later share.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Y-Crate]

In many ways, Google seems to have fallen victim to the same pattern of innovative ideas leading to half-baked products that cursed Apple back in the '90s.

They're always throwing random new products out there, and you get the idea that they don't really believe in them from Day 1, and have little confidence in their ability to succeed. More often than not, the products are quietly dropped and early adopters are told essentially: "Thanks for giving it a shot!"

Google Wave was interesting, except that Google didn't know how to tell people what it was, how it would benefit them or how to use it. An 80 minute instructional video is as useful as no video. It betrayed a lack of understanding of the market.

GoogleTV was a kinda neat idea that appeared dead on arrival as an actual product.

Apple's biggest achievement has been shedding the complex of being the company that develops cool stuff that goes nowhere because it wasn't packaged and presented properly. It's the reason it still exists today, while other members of that category like Atari and Commodore are no longer with us in any real sense. Nobody gives a damn if you've created something awesome that exists on a workbench, or in some niche of a niche.

Fanboys will whine that "Company X developed that years ago!" I know this, because I was one of them. I fought for Amigas and later, Macs. But fanboyism is just an excuse for mismanagement on the part of the companies being defended.

Who first developed a feature doesn't really matter. What matters is who developed that feature into a product and got the market interested.

It's the difference between the gamers who want to be the "idea guys" and tell you about that totally cool, awesome, fun game they want to develop, and the ones who sit down and turn those ideas into a cohesive, functional and enjoyable experience.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Svartalf]

Local storage and offline apps breaks the "in the cloud" model that they've got for ChromeOS.

The big problem then is that they've already got a competing OS that does all of this and more, does it without needing "the cloud" (without utterly ubiquitous (as in absolutely everywhere...) access to "the cloud", the things become bricks or almost so...) - and it's in phones and tablets everywhere making much, much bigger inroads than ChromeOS will probably hope to anytime soon. The intro video on it paints a nifty pictrue...but if Google loses their servers and backups fail, you lose everything just as if you'd not backed it up on a PC, Mac, etc. computer. If you don't have connectivity, you pretty much have an expensive paperweight/doorstop.

It's an answer looking for a problem to fix that other, mostly better, answers have been made for. Tech-wise, it's nifty. Use-wise, it's an iffy proposition in the large at best because your data is with a third party which means you're exposed to leak risks like the credit card leaks over the last couple of years.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[jayteedee]

Considering the huge number of classified defense projects that are on isolated PC's (or workstations), I'd say a whole lot gets done without a network connection in 2012.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[jayteedee]

The PC was introduced before the network. And when the networks started, it was a single floor or group and local access only. It was years before we had connections to other groups, and then even more years to other people in the same company at different locations. And then years more before a general connection to the outside world.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[DuckDodgers]

One of the biggest expenses for corporate IT departments is management of user computers. Thin clients make that relatively easy and much cheaper and faster than giving workstations to everyone. Making your application a web application, when that's appropriate (i.e. not for something resource intensive like graphics or computer aided design) also makes corporate IT costs lower - instead of deploying an upgrade to hundreds or thousands of machines, you update server software. In terms of security a thin client runs fewer applications so it has fewer attack surfaces than a full feature workstation.

Thin clients don't make sense for home users, of course. But for businesses, under some circumstances they're a good choice.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[mcgrew]

Well, these days it's a very large part of my computer use as well; I use my Linux PC mostly for radio stations (man I was glad when KSHE started streaming) and TV (Hulu and the networks' own sites, it's the only way for me to watch Big Bang Theory). But if the internet goes down I still have plenty of oggs, mp3, and movies and other shows on it. And I may not be able to surf slashdot when the internet's down, but at least I can compose a journal for when it comes back up.

Exactly the opposite of 1983 when I got on CompuServe. Very little there, most of my computing until this century (including BBSes and when I got on the net in the nineties) has been offline. Most of my data sharing until maybe 2003 or so was posting to my web sites and getting fragged playing Quake.

Almost everything I do at work is offline except for email.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[shiftless]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for this post. This is basically what I've been screaming for a while now. Google is over as a company. Might take em 5-10 years to realize it, but it's true....

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Google may soon be hitting the upper bounds of growth. It's not like there's unlimited demand for on-line (or any other) advertising. As more pages get viewed, the average cost per ad has to drop.

They've managed to do some price support by mailing $100 adword credit vouchers to anyone and everyone (I've thrown two of them out so far) - the idea being not so much to get new customers as to help generate more of a bidding competition in each market. After all, if you're spending "free money", you can bid higher - and whoever was bidding for the same term now has to fork over more real money.

However, that just means in the long run that there's less meat on the bone in terms of results per dollar spent, so while it gives a short-term bump, long-term, it encourages people to look at the competition.

And the competition, in this case, is Microsoft. They've pretty much killed! off! Yahoo! with! a! fake! bid! that they later withdrew ... so who's left?

I installed ghostery, and it's a bit of a shock to see up to two dozen ad trackers, ad servers, and analytics packages on a page load - this is out of control. One or two ads, I don't mind - but that sort of invasion of privacy, waste of bandwidth, and making everything load slower, I'm more than happy to block the peeping toms.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[DuckDodgers]

I disagree. The marketing is poor and the hardware is behind the times. I grant both, and both are damning.

But the problem with an iPad 2 or a laptop or a PC for a large group of users is three fold:
1. On laptops and tablets, users have lots of data on the device, which will be lost if the device is lost or stolen unless you have an intelligent automated backup procedure (and an intelligent automated backup procedure requires the same constant network connectivity as a Chrome OS device, so you gain nothing). And the restore process after a hardware failure takes some time - with a Chrome OS device, the restore process is instant. "Here's a new Chromebook, log in and get back to work."
2. On laptops and tablets, you have to worry about security patches and user installation of buggy or malicious software. With Chrome OS, the fewer features of the core operating system mean that it has a smaller attack surface, needs fewer updates, and has fewer opportunities for user problems.
3. On laptops and tablets, access to new company or school applications that are not web-based means you need some kind of distributed deployment system. Making your infrastructure web based means that updates to the applications are available to all users instantly. Now a totally web-based system still works with a laptop or iPad, but now you're paying for other features you don't need.
I'll throw in an advantage the Chrome OS notebook has over an iPad2 - for a large number of business and school applications, having a physical keyboard lets you work faster than having a touch screen. The iPad2 is superior for entertainment and for some forms of productivity, but not all.

Last but not least, there is nothing on Chrome OS tying you to the rest of the Google infrastructure. You can run the Salesforce.com CRM, you can change the search provider to Bing or DuckDuckGo, you can use ThinkFree or Zoho instead of Google Apps for your web-based office suite. You could even put Microsoft Office 365 on an intranet service if you needed to keep your documents internal.

I suspect that Google is unwilling to put the investment into Chrome OS it needs to succeed, and I would love to be proven wrong. But the product itself could work, the features are valuable.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[ewok85]

Thin clients mean more than job security and control of users. It means simplicity of maintenance and support. It means standardisation of hardware and software. In the right situations you get a better performance to price ratio, and lower overheads for hardware.

I love the ChromeOS concept, but I don't think people understand it so well. When you start asking for local storage and better hardware you shouldn't be using ChromeOS any more. I waited a long time for a Chromebook, but when they were finally released I took one look at the price and never went back.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[ewok85]

Except that Google Wave was never really a product - it was shown at a developers conference and given a limited release as something for developers to play with and expand upon. That people assumed it was an actual product is what doomed the project as a whole.

But I do agree - I use Google Apps and despite all the good there is, there are so many features which are blindingly obvious but non-existent (Google Docs has terrible sharing options), or features and products which haven't been given a second look since they were introduced years ago, leaving us to suffer (Google Talk client does not automatically show all Google Apps users on first use - you need to add them one by one). They produce something with promise and somehow let it die by never giving it the polish it deserves.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Barbara, not Barbie]

The marketing is poor and the hardware is behind the times. I grant both, and both are damning.

They really are damning, but in a much more significant fashion - Google is a marketing company first, a tech company second (everything else is third). They don't "get" hardware at all. "The chromebooks, they sucketh", and Android is so fragmented (gee, who would have thunk it - open source something and every manufacturer will fragment it. It's not like there weren't over 1,000 different linux distros to provide an example) that it's always going to be seen as less than the iDevices.

All Google did was badly wound competitors like Microsoft, Nokia, HP, and RIM, leaving Apple to take 95% of the profits on ~50% of the sales.

Oh well - at least it makes for interesting times :-)

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[mcgrew]

I'd really like to know how many offices in the year 2012 can "still get work done" without a network connection.

With a thin client your computer is down when the network is down. With a fat client your office apps all still work as long as you have your data saved on the local hard drive. And there's always sneakernet. PCs were in offices for years before they started getting connected to networks.

And what's wrong with IT people liking it?

Nothing, so long as it doesn't make users' jobs harder. After all, the users are the reason the IT staff are there in the first place.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[mcgrew]

One of the biggest expenses for corporate IT departments is management of user computers.

Without users you have no need for an IT department, so I'd say 100% of the expense of the IT department is is management of user computers.

But for businesses, under some circumstances they're a good choice.

Under some (perhaps limited) circumstances, yes. If a user's job is only entering data into a mainframe, then a thin client would make sense. But if spreadsheets, small databases, word processors, and other typical office apps are needed, thin clients make the users' jobs harder -- and the whole point of computers and IT staff is making users' jobs easier.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[mcgrew]

We had PCs in our office for ten years before they were networked together.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[DuckDodgers]

You're incorrect that thin clients block access to productivity applications. You can use remote desktop, Citrix, etc... (on both traditional thin clients and also Chrome OS devices, it's supported) to give user access to a complete desktop environment with spreadsheets, databases, word processors, and almost anything else you can imagine on a full Microsoft Windows (or if you prefer, Linux) desktop. The only exception, as I said earlier, heavily resource or graphics intensive applications that are poorly suited to working over a remote access protocol.

The thin client or Chrome OS device has relatively few configurable settings and is easy to manage remotely. The user's production data lives on company servers that are accessed by the virtual desktop protocol, where it's much easier for administrators to back it up, check it, handle errors, deploy upgrades, etc...

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[DuckDodgers]

It's an Apple marketing success to convince the general public that "lots of choices" should be stated in media articles as "fragmentation". Android has phones and tablets far cheaper than any iOS device, with more options for peripherals, more user interface options, etc... and it's been spun into a problem instead of an advantage.

In terms of money, Android is a serious investment in Google's long term future. Advertising revenue is Google's lifeblood, and smart phones offer more lucrative targeted advertising - instead of showing a user a Walmart ad when they're shopping for things online, you show them an ad for the Walmart two blocks away when they just did a search for nearby stores. Walmart and everyone else will pay more money per ad under those circumstances. In ten years there will be two billion smart phone users around the globe, and if half of them are using Android devices it will bring in more revenue for Google than Google gets from average PC users.

The real problem with Linux distros and desktop adoption is that 1.) You had a hard time getting Linux pre-installed on a computer. 2.) average buyers expected their computer to run regular Windows applications and older Windows applications they already owned right out of the box, and even with Wine that's often not the case. 3.) The linux community couldn't afford the advertising scale needed to bring in users. Even today most of my non-technical friends have never even heard of Linux. Android has all three problems addressed - you can get Android devices easily, buyers don't expect Android devices to run Windows (or Mac, or iOS) apps, and Google has been advertising the bejeezus out of Android on the web and on television.

Google is driving prices down on smart phones and tablets. That sucks for the industry, but rocks for consumers.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Barbara, not Barbie]

I'll try to deal with your points one at a time.

It's an Apple marketing success to convince the general public that "lots of choices" should be stated in media articles as "fragmentation". Android has phones and tablets far cheaper than any iOS device, with more options for peripherals, more user interface options, etc... and it's been spun into a problem instead of an advantage.

It is fragmentation, and it's not Apple who is say it - it's developers, who say that because of the way that there is no standard to address all the different customizations for each version of each phone from each vendor (not just the manufacturers) that it's simply not economical to develop for Android. Contrast that to over a $Billion a month paid out by Apple to iApp developers.

In terms of money, Android is a serious investment in Google's long term future.

No - actually, one of the problems that Android has is that Google hasn't put enough people on the project. One of the devs at Google mentioned this as being one of the reasons for the back-logs in fixes, etc.

Google bought Android Inc. in 2005 for $50 million. Total cost, all in, for all development, promotion, etc., of the Android platform to date is an addtional $650 million (Oracle vs Google). That's not just developer pay, but everything - co-op advertising deals with manufacturers and telcos, product give-aways, inducements to hardware manufacturers, overhead charged to the Android business unit, administrators salaries, you name it. Actual money spent on development by Google is well under $20 million a year. That's hardly a "serious investment" in today's world, and one of the drivers behind acquiring Motorola. Moto had 3 options - Android, doing a Nokiasoft, or merging their phone biz with another manufacturer.

Google simply doesn't "get" hardware. Just look at the stupidly-priced chromebooks. For less money, you can buy an iPad2 with much better battery life and a lot less weight, or a much nicer laptop.

Advertising revenue is Google's lifeblood,

Oh, I agree - and that's why they have a problem. The more advertising out there, the less revenue from each ad. The market is saturated.

and smart phones offer more lucrative targeted advertising

And Google had to enter into a deal with Apple to power Siri searches ***for free*** or Microsoft would have done it - and guess what? Google doesn't get any revenue from that. It's called "buying market presence", and is a sign that you're not as able to dominate your market as you want people to think you are.

- instead of showing a user a Walmart ad when they're shopping for things online, you show them an ad for the Walmart two blocks away when they just did a search for nearby stores. Walmart and everyone else will pay more money per ad under those circumstances.

Not in a saturated market. It's the same as computers - once something becomes a commodity, the only way to keep market share is to throw in more features at less cost. Location-aware services won't command a premium, they'll just help delay price erosion on ad sales, especially since Microsoft is entering the same market, and Microsoft has a lot more money to play around with. And Apple could jump into the market with both feet by buying or developing their own search tech at any time - we now know what it takes to make a decent search offering.

In ten years there will be two billion smart phone users around the globe, and if half of them are using Android devices

Sure, but they'll be the bottom half of the market, same as they are now. The half that generates $5 of revenue for Google per phone as compared to over 100x that for Apple. Google would have been smarter to sell Android to Motorola - or Nokia - instead of buying Motoro

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[DuckDodgers]

It's a good discussion, thanks.

First, I think you and I have at least two goals that are at odds. I want to see more competition to drive down prices, and I want to see more adoption of free software because of both the competition it fosters and the fact that the biggest headaches of my day job is proprietary software. ( I don't object to paying a software license if the product works. I object to the fact that managing the licensing for my proprietary apps is a fucking nightmare, and I object to the fact that no less than five different proprietary programs we use at my company had their licensing costs increase by 10X in a five year period. We have a "free software only" policy for new tools going forward because anything else will blow the IT budget entirely.)

With respect to fragmentation versus choice, I think you have a good point. I think there is some choice, and that's good, but clearly the fragmentation is a serious problem. Likewise Google executives were stupid to think they could influence carriers to facilitate software updates.

With respect to Linux distributions, I've been using Linux since Slackware... 8, I think, not long after you since Slackware jumped a few versions. I've had excellent luck with reliability and stability for five years - no real problems, really. But you're right that hardware support sucks, and that plus the lack of flawless Windows app support are the reason Linux as it currently stands will never dominate the desktop. I think the quote for Linus Torvalds is taken out of context - he was bitching because OpenSUSE and most other versions of Linux maintain a default security policy oriented towards business servers, so you needed root access to change printer settings and a few other things that should not require user root privileges on a personal PC.

I think your iPad2 point is unfair - the iPad2 just dropped in price with the launch of the iPad3. For the months before the iPad3 launched, you could get a number of Android tablets on par with the iPad2 for a lower price. Likewise for phones.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Thanks - I try.

The LInus quote wasn't meant to be the "untimate" definitive quote on the sorry state of the Linux desktop, btw. It's just indicative of how even people who use it all the time ... well, it still has usability issues.

I had been using opensuse for years, having stuck with it despite the kde 4.0 fiasco ... but it went the way of all distros on the last upgrade, totally crapware, and my choices, after a lot of looking around, were to either go to bsd (still tempting), go back to slackware (which is no longer supported between releases - the update site has been dead for a year now), on to mint (too much in flux) or fedora. Fedora won out, but even it had issues at first.

So there's simply no way that I can ever again recommend linux to anyone. Not unless they have an admin on site. You really do get what you pay for.

Now, on the question of your company's exploding licensing costs for proprietary software - have you asked for quotes from local developers on making a replacement at a more reasonable cost?

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[DuckDodgers]

I am most of the local developers, it's a very small company. In our case, we used Crystal Reports Application Server 9 for $650 per permanent server license in 2003. Last time we contacted whoever owns them now for an estimate, it was $15,000 per server per year. We replaced it with Jasper Reports, which is open source, and bought the add-on report server Jasper Server, which is not. Jasper Server's annual price tripled, so we dropped it and wrote our own report display and automated delivery web GUI. All of our research team used to have SPSS statistical software, that went up in price a lot so we've cut back from one copy per researcher to two for the entire company and do the rest of the statistical analysis with spreadsheets and SQL.

I've been using Ubuntu Linux without problems for two years - I know the Unity interface is tremendously unpopular, but I found it very easy to use.

I think you're overstating the quality of Microsoft and Apple products. I have friends who bought PCs with Vista that came bundled with a printer with no Vista-compatible device drivers. I know plenty of people who bought a Windows PC to play games without having a salesman explaining that the device they picked had a low tier graphics card and couldn't handle the games they bought with it. There are a number of old PC applications that run better on emulators than on Windows whatever. And at my job, I shouldn't need to take a Microsoft training seminar just so I can navigate the legalese related to server licensing - we run Ubuntu servers because the administration is damn near idiot proof (if I can figure it out, anyone can) and I don't need to spend 15% of my time managing licenses.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Barbara, not Barbie]

"Last time we contacted whoever owns them now"

I feel your pain. I remember when Crystal Reports was a joke. Just goes to show, I guess ...

On the "friends who bought PCs" - they could have returned the bundled printers and got that portion of their money back, plus a few bucks for their time and inconvenience. That's what small claims court is for, and if enough people do it, retailers will have to do a better job of informing their customers. If they can't be bothered, it's one of those "you get the government^Wretailer you deserve" things.

The same goes for people who buy machines with low-end specs and can't play the latest and greatest - you get what you pay for. As Heinlein wrote, TANSTAAFL.

The license management thing - maybe it's time for companies to actually demand that the courts enforce existing laws requiring that licenses be clear enough that the parties can actually know what they're agreeing to? It only takes one to stand up to the bully and bloody his nose ... but I know, management will freak out and go "OMG they'll crush us!"

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[DuckDodgers]

My point with the Vista and game examples is that the commercial vendors have a generally better end user experience, but they're still very far from perfect. I'm not asking TANSTAAFL to be violated, I'm just providing examples where big players made similar classes of errors to the little community-driven Linux distributions.

As for licenses and license management, I'm hoping nothing is done - because at least for me, high proprietary software costs and license frustration is what got me interested in free software in the first place. If the big name companies keep annoying users, maybe eventually there will be enough volunteers helping Fedora, or Mint, or OpenSuse plus Wine and device driver development that the user experience hits parity with Microsoft and Apple. I know it's a dream, but it's definitely the future I want.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Unfortunately, it's not going to happen. Testing and proper development cost $$$. The last couple of decades have seen an absolute explosion of crappy software from both proprietary and open-source vendors - but at least the proprietary ones have both the financial incentives and the means to do proper testing, and to pay people to do the stuff that nobody volunteers for.

Today was another example - printing envelopes using libreoffice under linux - it's more than 20 years behind the times. For me, it no longer matters - after almost 20 years of using open source, I'm done. My next computer will be a mac, because even if my time were free, my sanity isn't.

Open source has truly fulfilled the Peter Principle. I wish it were otherwise, but that's reality. It sucks, and I wish I hadn't wasted so much time and effort on it for so little return.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[DuckDodgers]

But when a company that has the resources for testing and proper development still screws up, it makes me ten times as angry as when a loosely affiliated group of volunteers makes a mistake. So I'm left with a choice between being annoyed a few times per month at my Ubuntu desktop at home or frothing at the mouth and shouting obscenities at my Windows workstation at the office a few times per year.

And there are some things the open source community plainly does better - try to read the documentation for Microsoft's "Windows Azure" cloud offering and then read "OpenStack" or "OpenNebula" or app deployment platforms like "Heroku" - I tried to get a Windows Azure VM running just to play with it, and after the docs made my brains start leaking out my nose I gave up. I like having to reboot to apply software updates far less often. I like that the default file browser and user interface elements hang less often. And with respect to Macs, I like paying a lot less money.

Also, I think the Peter Principle applies to proprietary vendors as well as it does everywhere else, so I'm not sure what's unique about the open source community. At least here if a jackass runs a project he's not in charge of your chances at a higher salary. :)

But we've truly beaten this horse to death. I understand and respect your choice, good luck with your future Macs.

Bummer

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Chromebook and love it just how it is. It has become the primary computer in the house because it turns on/off quickly and does exactly what we need 99% of the time (just the web). For me at least, anything more would be noise and would lower the appeal for the device. I hope that whatever UI changes they make here are optional.

Re:Bummer

[alen]

my ipad has taken over that task with the pluses being real local applications being installed and i can carry around 64GB of data on it as well

Re:Bummer

[ArcherB]

my ipad has taken over that task with the pluses being real local applications being installed and i can carry around 64GB of data on it as well

How much did the GP spend on his Chromebook, which has a bigger screen, full keyboard and mouse vs your iPad? Also, Chromebooks can connect to external drives, including those NTFS partitions, making your 64GB seem rather pathetic. Yes, your iPad is a bit easier to carry around, but it costs twice as much. For the extra money I can get a nice bag to carry a Chromebook, real mouse and the external hard drive.

Sure, the iPad is really nice and has its advantages, but don't assume that it's more capable or a better value. Personally, I'd prefer to have two Chromebooks sitting around my house than a single iPad.

Re:Bummer

[Lordfly]

>Sure, the iPad is really nice and has its advantages, but don't assume that it's more capable or a better value. Personally, I'd prefer to have two Chromebooks sitting around my house than a single iPad.

Sure, but i'm betting that more people are like my wife, who basically abandoned their shiny fancy Macbook, for first an iPod touch, and then a rooted Nook Color tablet, because it's couch friendly. Using a mouse on a sofa cushion sucks.

Re:Bummer

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see the value proposition of Chromebook versus:

Linux on a netbook.
Android on a netbook.
Android tablet in a case with a bluetooth keyboard.

Enlighten me.

Fix #1

[Anonymous Coward]

Scrap the ChromeOS netbook idea as futile, reallocate resources to make Android usable on netbooks instead.

There are Android netbooks out there, but it's not a pretty experience - even full physical keyboard support is rather suckish.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything suggested just makes Chrome OS more Windows-like.

PowerPoint yes, Word no

[tepples]

You might want to consider improving your example. Slideshows are at the high end of complexity that can be feasibly created on an undocked phone or PDA. They have to be readable at a distance, and the amount of text that can fit on a slide is close to the amount that can comfortably fit on an index card or a pocket device's screen. So I don't see any practical problem preventing a port of PowerPoint for Windows Phone or any other slideshow application (or, equivalently, a note-taking application that uses an index card metaphor) for a phone OS.

Besides, the phone fanboys don't necessarily claim that we'll use the screen. Some are under the impression that we'll be plugging the phones into big monitors through HDMI, pairing Bluetooth keyboards, and turning the phone's surface into a trackpad. Something like Word or Pages might just work on a docked phone.

Re:PowerPoint yes, Word no

[Electricity Likes Me]

At that point the phone is really just a headless desktop (until you dock it).

But I suspect if we were seriously considering that option, then we'd rapidly - and slowly and stupidly - rediscover most of the classic desktop metaphors we enjoy today. They're widespread for a reason.

ipad killed the chromebook

[alen]

i was a CR-48 beta tester and never figured out the point of it. they look like laptops but the OS is gimped. yet cost the same as a netbook. what is the point of buying one?

the ipad does more which is why apple is selling every one they make

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[Anonymous Coward]

They make good kiosks, although you need to plug-in a mouse,
rather than rely on the goofy touchpad.

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[FictionPimp]

Exactly,

I have a CR-48 sitting on my desk. It has been off for at least a year. I was unable to do any of the things I do on a daily basis with it. I need a full terminal with ssh support, a nice development environment that doesn't require 3rd party servers I am not in control of, and the ability to play and listen to my 40 gigs of music.

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[Anonymous Coward]

People are so short sided, perhaps its the world we live in but imagine a day when networks are truly ubiquitous, reliable (99.9999), and storage is dirt cheap(wait we're here already). In this world, ChromeOs (or similar OS's) and thin client machines that run them will be the norm.

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[alen]

so? why would i spend the exact same amount of $$$ on a laptop that does less than a similar spec'd laptop with a different OS

my ipad makes it comfortable for me to use a computer on my sofa, train to work and has a wide variety of applications that no one had dreamed was possible 5 years ago.

the chromebook seems to only be a web browser, something that is going the way of the dodo little by little

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything I've read recently says people want apps not web apps. The market has spoken.

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[ffflala]

I picked up a Samsung Series 5 last summer, and it came with 2 years of (minimal backup) 3G service, which when amortized into the total cost made Series 5 a decent budget buy.

3G plus excellent battery life means that it has been very useful as a commuter device -- particularly on trains and planes, or in the middle of nowhere. In these circumstances it's better than a smartphone, and I prefer it to any tablet device I've used so far -- but mainly simply because it has a real keyboard. And I'd already been using google docs as my main office platform already. Had I not been doing so already, I'd likely have found this thing far less useful.

If you're unable, reluctant, or unwilling to try adapt from a desktop model ChromeOS will probably only be maddening. It, OTOH, you find that 90%+ of the time spent on your desktop is in a browser already, it's not a terribly difficult adjustment to make.

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[Electricity Likes Me]

While we're at it, let's imagine a world where unicorns have been genetically engineered into reality...

We don't live in that world, and there are very good reasons to think we may never. There are other, equally good reasons, to think it would be a horrible idea to design a modern economy/society based solely on that assumption. But all of that is a sideshow to the fact that we do not live in that world now.

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[Electricity Likes Me]

I disagree - or at least, I think the market is not that intelligent about this idea.

I think what we're seeing is a reflection of the fact that people still tend to appreciate the distinction between things which require internet access, and things which do not - even if it isn't that well informed. People want to be able to say "right, this device can do all of these things with no internet access, and contains this data". But they also want to make sure that, from as many places as possible, they can synchronize and update or change that information. To a huge extent, this is what Dropbox - and the LAN sync protocol - is really all about.

The real problem is that for a variety of reasons, companies draw a hazy, hard to distinguish line around these things (and then stuff like the iPhone doesn't let you stick a bookmark on the main screen like it's an app - if you could, I suspect downloads of the Facebook app would drop to near 0 overnight).

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how this world you describe (internet everywhere, 5 9's, cheap storage) is going to make thin clients popular again. For all intents and purposes I have all of those things where I live, and I have zero desire to use a thin client cloud solution. A hybrid I'm down for (stuff I want to be in the cloud is in the cloud, data only, not apps, everything else is local), but certainly not everything over a wire.

Thin clients blow, been there before, more than once, and I don't see anything in Chrome OS that would change that opinion. I understand that they felt like they had to try, it's a web centric company, they want to be the new desktop OS and circumvent the current incumbents. This approach gives them an end run, and wouldn't all that tasty data make for awesome analytics to sell to our real customers? OK, so maybe that's a motivator, maybe it's not...4 years ago I would have said no, today I'm not sure at all...Google's lost a lot of my trust (another reason for this being a bad idea, google owning all the worlds data and how you access it? That's a shit ton of trust in a company that certainly doesn't deserve it).

Anyhow, good on them for doing more research into thin clients and trying to make them work, maybe some of that research will be useful in other areas, but the concept is defective by design. They can't seriously expect it to be a success.

All that being said iPad totally killed my laptop in terms of personal usage except for one thing, coding. If I'm not coding on my desktop or laptop, then I'm on using my iPad. My wife who never codes has not once turned her laptop on since the first iPad came out (I got her one shortly after launch).

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[kris2112]

Mobile Safari allows you to add any bookmark to the Home screen.

When viewing a page, press the action button in the center of the tool bar and press Add to Home Screen.

This feature has been available for a couple years.

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[Anonymous Coward]

*PET PEEVE* I apologize for this... but it is "short sighted". Meaning they have no ability to see very far into the future.

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly,

I have a CR-48 sitting on my desk. It has been off for at least a year. I was unable to do any of the things I do on a daily basis with it. I need a full terminal with ssh support, a nice development environment that doesn't require 3rd party servers I am not in control of, and the ability to play and listen to my 40 gigs of music.

I know what you mean. I have a Porsche 911 sitting in my garage. Haven't driven it for at least a year. I need lots of seating room for my kid's little league team, off-road suspension so I don't have to rely on someone else's paved roads, and the ability to haul a trailer containing my collection of fourteen thousand Betamax tapes.

Whenever someone asks me why the hell I bought a product that in no way fits my requirements, I just quickly change the subjLOOK BEHIND YOU, A THREE-HEADED MONKEY!!!

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[Electricity Likes Me]

What do you know, I learned something today. I would still argue my point stands.

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[spire3661]

I think this is Chromebook's biggest failing, price. People just do not want to spend laptop money on a thin-client laptop

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem is that this is a poor car analogy. The ChromeBooks are more akin to a Yugo than the Porsche... Now...the laptop I want and almost need...that's a Lamboghini (I have the "Porsche"... ;-D)

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[Svartalf]

Short sighted? Really? Is it that or is it that you're looking at pipedreams?

Networks being truly being ubiquitous isn't going to be around for quite a while yet to come. Storage being dirt cheap, yeah. But where is it residing? In some central repository...that can be raided. You're hoping on the sheer volume to prevent it from being nabbed from that repository. Ask all the differing retail and banking interests about that sort of thing and see what they have to say about card/ssn/etc. info being leaked out to the world. "Won't happen," isn't the right answer there.

Without being able to assure network connectivity, they're basically bricks.
Without being able to assure network security with 100% certainty, it's insane to put most stuff out on "the cloud".

Even in Star Trek, they didn't have "thin computing" everywhere- you had PADDs and you had Tricorders.

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's more that the native UI is typically a better experience and allows full use of the device's capabilities (contacts, GPS, camera, accelerometer).

For example, see:

http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/7832-the-fight-gets-technical-mobile-apps-vs-mobile-sites

http://mobithinking.com/native-or-web-app

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[ffflala]

It seems like the people who prefer tablets aren't clear on the difference between the hardware and the OS. A Chromebook is a laptop, it has minimal internal storage and impressive battery life. You can install other Linux flavors on it besides ChromeOS.

To clarify: a Chromebook is not limited to ChromeOS. If you were going to buy a laptop with similar specs and price already, and the only difference is what OS comes preinstalled, ChromeOS will be the most widely available preinstalled Linux option.

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[ewok85]

I'd compare it to a moped - sure, it gets you from A to B, it is small and doesn't use much fuel. Who needs a full sized car - most of the time its all empty! If you need to carry something why not just have it delivered?... etc etc...

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[FictionPimp]

I didn't buy it, I was selected to test it. I had no idea what capabilities they would give it. Turns out, it was functionally useless for anything I do with technology.

Sucked as a web browser (tablet is better) and sucked as a laptop.

pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see any advantage of a Chromebook over an Android tablet with a keyboard.

And if Google wants something more powerful, they should just support Ubuntu (well, something like Ubuntu but with a traditional, simpler UI).

Re:pointless

[dskzero]

Do you realize that comment is pretty pointless itself? The idea is how to fix the Chrome OS, not what you should replace it with.

Re:pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a valid point, what is the point of chromebook over android....nothing!

Re:pointless

[Daniel Phillips]

ChromeOS can be fixed most efficiently by taking it out behind the barn and shooting it.

Java web app support

[blahbooboo]

Seriously large omission is a JRE for Chrome OS

Re:Java web app support

[sosume]

Like Flash for IOS?

Re:Java web app support

[Altanar]

They'll add that when Oracle stops suing Google for using modified Java in Android.

another?

[Anonymous Coward]

another paid information weekly spot of empty content?

Its the price stupid, not the features!

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the idea of Chromebooks, but I haven't passed on them due to lack of features or the absence of a traditional desktop. I've passed on them because they're too expensive compared to the competition. When my options are a new Chromebook for $300 or a used netbook for $150, I'll choose the netbook based on price alone.

Ubuntu for Android

[tepples]

At that point the phone is really just a headless desktop

And this is exactly the phone fanboys' point, as I understand it: if a phone or tablet does everything, including act as a headless desktop, why buy a separate desktop PC?

But I suspect if we were seriously considering that option, then we'd rapidly - and slowly and stupidly - rediscover most of the classic desktop metaphors we enjoy today.

Which is why Canonical is trying to get Android phone makers to install chrooted Ubuntu for use when a device is docked.

Re:Ubuntu for Android

[FreonTrip]

A separate desktop PC can be leagues more powerful than a cellular phone because it's not hobbled by the same frugal power or space constraints. But at least as importantly, a more conventional PC isn't tied to a carrier, with all the baggage - privacy, monthly billing for service, &c. - that entails.

Suggested improvement: kill Chrome OS...

[sootman]

... and devote the resources to something else. Seriously. The market for "I need a laptop that can run a browser and nothing else" is 1) ridiculously small and 2) can be fulfilled with nothing more than a properly-configured Linux distro. Netbooks, while popular in some areas, were NOT the sales success that many people thought they would be. An even more limited netbook will not likely fare better.*

Laptops are already pretty cheap. The theoretical savings of making a stripped-down laptop that just runs a browser are not offset the costs of such low-volume production.

Tablets are the way to go. The market has spoken. "Simplicity" in computing does not mean "I want to run everything in a browser", it means "I want to click giant icons and run one, fullscreen, sandboxed app at a time." Sorry, Chrome OS team--you went the wrong direction.

In other news, I literally LOLed when some guy at Google was talking about how a Chromebook (that is, one particular piece of hardware) would actually "get faster over time" due to its automatic software updates (which would presumably bring increased efficiency and performance.) BULL SHIT. Why is the Web largely unusable on anything less than 1 GHz anymore? Oh right, because web pages are getting fatter all the time! Does anyone REALLY think that Google will make the OS more efficient faster than web pages will become more bloated?

Seriously Google: KILL THAT SHIT and let those employees work on something worthwhile.

* and before anyone mentions the iPad: yes, it is more limited in some ways, but it's also more powerful in others. On the other hand, I can't think of a single thing a Chromebook can do that a Netbook can't also do, but a Netbook can do literally everything that any other computer can do, while Chromebooks are limited to "I can do some things that happen within a browser."

Re:Suggested improvement: kill Chrome OS...

[jeti]

Any savings will not be with the initial purchase. Maintenance, however, may be cheaper. A properly sandboxed platform that is always up to date and stores all user data on servers may be attractive to libraries, schools and even large companies.

Re:Suggested improvement: kill Chrome OS...

[Anonymous Coward]

when android took off people want and still want a x86 desktop android. instead we got chrome os the most useless os out there,

Re:Suggested improvement: kill Chrome OS...

[Rich0]

I largely tend to agree, but there are some disadvantages of a Netbook:

1. They usually require some level of configuration when you provision them.
2. It is easy to store and work with local data, which means that not all your data will be someplace safe if something bad happens.

I've tinkered with my cr-48 here and there, and one thing that is nice is that I ever mess things up too much I just reimage the thing - takes 15 minutes. Then I turn it on, log in just like I do any other time I turn it on, and in about 60 seconds everything looks exactly how it looked before I reimaged it (minus whatever I messed up by hacking on it).

If you can run a business purely on the web, Chrome OS actually looks like a pretty nice solution. The problem is that web-based apps are pretty limited right now. FOSS options for web-based apps are also quite limited - good luck finding a decent web-based email client that isn't proprietary. The closest you'll find are squirrelmail and roundcube, and neither can hold a candle to gmail.

Re:Suggested improvement: kill Chrome OS...

[Svartalf]

And if you think that the data will be omnipresent and in the total control of these groups, I've got some nifty oceanside real-estate on the Florida Coast to sell you...only a few gators on it...

Re:Suggested improvement: kill Chrome OS...

[couchslug]

"Netbooks, while popular in some areas, were NOT the sales success that many people thought they would be."

Because manufacturers added features and pushed the price into notebook territory.

Re:Suggested improvement: kill Chrome OS...

[ffflala]

I can't think of a single thing a Chromebook can do that a Netbook can't also do, but a Netbook can do literally everything that any other computer can do, while Chromebooks are limited to "I can do some things that happen within a browser."

You're conflating the hardware (Chromebook) with the OS (ChromeOS). You can install other OSes on Chromebooks; in fact you're guaranteed to be able to install other Linux flavors on it, since ChromeOS is itself one... and thus can do literally everything that any other computer can do, at least as far as any Netbook can.

Re:Suggested improvement: kill Chrome OS...

[sootman]

> You're conflating the hardware (Chromebook) with the OS (ChromeOS).

Chrome was created to run on small netbooks. From Wikipedia: "Google developers began coding the operating system in 2009, inspired by the growing popularity and lower power consumption of netbooks and the focus of these small laptops on Internet access." They've also shown it on tablets, but the advantages over Android are unclear, especially with how mature Android has become over the years.

Long story short, I don't see any point to Chrome. What needs does it fill that aren't already met by Android or a locked-down Linux distro?

The turbo button

[tepples]

A separate desktop PC can be leagues more powerful than a cellular phone

But the success of tablets and smartphones and the blurring of the line between netbooks and small laptops has shown that one doesn't need an Extreme Edition CPU to do homework, Facebook, YouTube, and light gaming.

because it's not hobbled by the same frugal power or space constraints.

Power constrained? Make it quad core, with two cores turned off while not connected to a charger. The backlight uses a huge chunk of the power anyway, and a docked PDA or phone can run with the screen turned off. This behavior could even be advertised as the return of the turbo button. Space constrained? So are ultrabooks, and the solution is the same: dock to an external hard drive.

But at least as importantly, a more conventional PC isn't tied to a carrier

Nor is a tablet. Nor is a PDA such as Apple's iPod touch or Samsung's Galaxy Player. Tablets and PDAs use Wi-Fi, which most often connects to a wired last mile, and no wired ISP that I've heard of has run the sort of subsidy model common in the North American cellular market since the dial-up days of i-Opener, WebTV, and PeoplePC. Nor is an unlocked GSM phone, now that (as I've read) AT&T has given up some spectrum in a more commonly used band to T-Mobile USA as compensation for the failed merger.

Re:The turbo button

[FreonTrip]

But the success of tablets and smartphones and the blurring of the line between netbooks and small laptops has shown that one doesn't need an Extreme Edition CPU to do homework, Facebook, YouTube, and light gaming.

Right, and tablets and phones will be fine for a majority of users going forward. I'm 100% OK with this - conventional workstations are likely to become more expensive, but there will also be fewer "dumb user" concessions made in their design. That doesn't mean tablets and smartphones will be well-suited to ArcGIS, PETRA, or video transcoding. I'm also not fond of the carrier/manufacturer-mandated, inherently boxed-in nature of the experience.

Power constrained? Make it quad core, with two cores turned off while not connected to a charger. The backlight uses a huge chunk of the power anyway, and a docked PDA or phone can run with the screen turned off. This behavior could even be advertised as the return of the turbo button [wikipedia.org]. Space constrained? So are ultrabooks, and the solution is the same: dock to an external hard drive.

Yes, but as admirable as per-watt performance is, ARM's absolute performance offered still hovers somewhere around the Pentium II level in best-case scenarios. Toss in some dedicated-purpose DSPs and that can be mitigated, at the cost of some general flexibility. The focus on miniaturization does result in a hobbling of speed, expandability, and general flexibility, and as some savvy others have pointed out, will probably result in the eventual, painful reinvention or reinterpretation of certain desktop metaphors when a portable device is effectively "docked."

Nor is a tablet. Nor is a PDA such as Apple's iPod touch or Samsung's Galaxy Player. Tablets and PDAs use Wi-Fi, which most often connects to a wired last mile, and no wired ISP that I've heard of has run the sort of subsidy model common in the North American cellular market since the dial-up days of i-Opener, WebTV, and PeoplePC. Nor is an unlocked GSM phone, now that (as I've read) AT&T has given up some spectrum in a more commonly used band to T-Mobile USA as compensation for the failed merger.

But it IS limited by what the manufacturer or designer intends for it to do. There will be a market going forward for an expandable, upgradeable PC, even if it shifts back to a more professional focus. My wife's iPad is a joy to use for lots of casual computing purposes, but for my kit I know where I plan to spend my money.

Re:The turbo button

[FreonTrip]

Gah, the "Nor is a tablet..." through to the "...failed merger" part was meant to be italicized; I must have goofed on a formatting tag. Cheers.

Emacs beat them to dotless versions

[tepples]

Now we have 2-year-old browsers with double-digit version numbers

If you're complaining about version numbering schemes that lack a dot, Emacs beat them to it.

Re:Emacs beat them to dotless versions

[wed128]

To be fair, emacs dropped their dot when they realised the '2' to the left of it would probably never change again.

Browser ballot, N edition, pls hurry!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at the Wikipedia article got me very worried: I'm not sure I understood it right, since it seems so unbelievable, but it looks like Google Chrome OS comes with A PREINSTALLED WEB BROWSER that even integrates with the operating system to some extent?? That would be horrible news! After all, we know from the Microsoft case how evil and possibly unlawful that sort of thing is.

Said article even mentions that Google Chrome OS has its own media player, but I can't find word on the N edition they obviously need to supply for the European market. Does anybody know more about this situation? I'm terribly afraid that the law might somehow be the same for everyone, so Google would be crushed by terrible Euro fines! I don't want Google to get hurt! :'((

Re:Browser ballot, N edition, pls hurry!!

[spire3661]

I really hate when people trivialize Microsoft's horrible abusive monopoly practices.

Re:Browser ballot, N edition, pls hurry!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I lived in the past once too. By the time Google is done with us, 1990s' MS will strike us as a cute, if somewhat misguided, garage firm.

Re:Browser ballot, N edition, pls hurry!!

[spire3661]

Accurately remembering hte past is not he same as living it. Google has NOWHERE NEAR the influence Microsoft had at the height of its power, and there is VAST choice in the marketplace now. I dont think you understand the minor dark age of computing MS introduced, all the way back to Bill G formalizing the license in the asshole ways that he did.

Re:Browser ballot, N edition, pls hurry!!

[Anonymous Coward]

So your point is that since The Bad Thing has already happened, everyone aspiring to the same general goals should be given carte blanche, for it's bound to be trivial next time round?

And then you're talking about something as ludicrously ephemeral as a few million office PCs. At the same time, university and national libraries all over the world are selling out to Google Books, effectively, in the long term, putting the fundament of Western cultural heritage in the hands of a glorified advertising firm. In five years from now, your augmented reality glasses will automatically google every face that passes by, marking people "potentially dangeous" if they haven't checked into Google+ in more than ten days. The way we perceive and interact with the world, with one another, will be changed fundamentally, plunging us back into a true Dark Age, and not one of computing or the Internet either, a total social, cultural, epistemological one. I'm deeply sorry I was trivialising your monopoly thing above.

It's a shame that the people who have the horizon to watch and see this happen are still paralysed with nursing their MS shell shock.

Re:Browser ballot, N edition, pls hurry!!

[spire3661]

Im talking about real evil deeds MS did to strangle the competition and stifle innovation at a time when there was no choice at all in business. You are talking about things Google hasnt even done. MS is a convicted monopolist, google doesn't even HAVE a monopoly in the legal sense, even in search. Microsoft had over 90% of the world's computer running its OS at one point in time and no viable competition. Google barely has 2/3 of the search market and the competition is poised to consume them if they falter in the slightest. But keep on beating that 'google is da debil' drum.

Reality?

[Jane Q. Public]

"But it is a concession to the realities of a market that's more comfortable with the familiar desktop metaphor."

It isn't the "metaphor" at all. It's the "reality" of people "being comfortable" with what works, and not comfortable with what doesn't.

Google and others have pushed "the cloud" prematurely. It just doesn't work well enough yet. There are far too many issues:

(1) Unpredictable downtime for even the most robust of services (in 2011 those included Google and Amazon).

(2) Security issues, including (a) who has authorized access, (b) who normally has actual access including physical access, and (c) vulnerability to external exploits.

(3) Performance.

(4) Government intrusion or seizure (ala Megaupload).

Let's face it. "The cloud" is not mature yet. Reasons (1) and (2) together are enough to keep me from putting my business information in the cloud. Reason (4) is another reason that, by itself, might also stop me from doing so.

Maybe some day.

Re:Reality?

[Svartalf]

1, 2, 4 are why I say that this is a folly.

What stops me from using Chrome OS and other tech

[Anonymous Coward]

What stops me from using Chrome OS, Apple products in general, and Android phones is privacy. I should be allowed to use any device without having to have an account. I think that requirement is rediculous. Even websites are now pushing logging in with Facebook, Twitter, etc. Do you really need to know who I am? I semi-anonymity really that repulsive or wrong?

I really want to have an iPhone, but I don't want to be tracked, my purchases be tracked and logged, the music and books I read be reviewable for others and for sale as they often are. Consumerism has gotten so ugly. We are the products and what we are getting in return is simpy not worth what we give up -- namely our privacy. Some people say to get over it, that the days of privacy are gone. Others say we still have a vestige left. The Internet has so much to offer, but I'm not willing to trade what privacy I have left to enjoy what is not a fair trade.

Let's see... I don't have a Facebook account, or Twitter, nor AIM, nor Gmail, nor Hotmail, nor Yahoo. But I love to see what's happening. I don't use iTunes, Pandora, or anything else for music. I just don't want to have a zillion accounts out there. I'm rather proud of the fact that a search of my name on any search engine turns up very very little -- just the normal name and where I have lived on those sites that sell that stuff. Nothing else exists. I'd like to keep it that way but still be able to take advantage of services. Any thoughts...

Droid does what iDon't

[tepples]

conventional workstations are likely to become more expensive

So how will students and hobbyists who need a conventional PC for their study or their hobby obtain one affordably?

But it IS limited by what the manufacturer or designer intends for it to do.

Which is why I recommend a Galaxy Player over an iPod touch and a Transformer over an iPad, especially now that Android has AIDE. To make an analogy to video game consoles at the start of the fourth generation: Droid does what iDon't.*

* The reference to "Blast Processing" at the beginning of the video is slightly inaccurate. Blast Processing is Sega's term for using the DMA controller to copy data to VRAM. The Super NES has the same feature but just doesn't call it that.

The desktop LIVES...!

[Anonymous Coward]

"But it is a concession to the realities of a market that's more comfortable with the familiar desktop metaphor.'"

Somebody wanna get the Metro team at Microsoft on the line....

Re:What stops me from using Chrome OS and other te

[ewok85]

With ChromeOS you can just use the "default" account - the option of logging in just means they can give you all of your settings and options and have them migrate from device to device.

Best use of ChromeOS I've seen...

[ewok85]

Drop it on a USB drive, plug it into old laptops. Instant fully working OS with all my options. Beats installing a new OS every time I find some old hunk of junk in the office.

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is surprised people won't warm up to the idea of a computer that is useless if not plugged in to the internet? They're not as smart as I once thought. Imagine a car that won't run unless it can get a cell signal to boot up the computer that runs the engine. It's great when there's a signal, and when the system isn't jammed by 10,000 people all trying to fire up around the same time to leave a concert, a game, or just driving to work... also, what happens when you drive somewhere outside the area of coverage, and want to fire your car back up?

That is, what if you're on a long trip, and you want to work on the document that you could have opened and edited without the help of the "cloud" since both the document and the software needed to manipulate it would have BOTH been there... but since you're using Google Chrome OS, they're beyond your reach, and your computer is a big paperweight without its internet connection.

No, I'm not surprised.

You have 2 /. accounts for trolling?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2787367&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=39697575

How many reg'd 'luser' acct's do U have here?

[Anonymous Coward]

4 trolling, upmodding yourself, + downmodding others http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2787367&cid=39697623 Hmmm?

How many reg'd 'luser' acc't. do U have?

[Anonymous Coward]

4 trolling, upmodding urself, + downmodding others http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2787367&cid=39697623 Hmmm?