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Chrome OS Receives Extreme Makeover With Material Design and Google Now
MojoKid writes Late last week, Google quietly began inviting people to opt into the beta channel for ChromeOS to help the company "shape the future" of the OS. Some betas can be riskier than others, but Google says that opting into this one is just a "little risk", one that will pay off handsomely for those who crave new features. New in this version is Chrome Launcher 2.0, which gives you quick access to a number of common features, including the apps you use most often (examples are Hangouts, Calculator, and Files). Some apps have also received a fresh coat of paint, such as the file manager. Google notes that this is just the start, so there will be more updates rolling out to the beta OS as time goes on. Other key features available in this beta include the ability to extract pass protected Zip archives, as well as a perk for travelers. ChromeOS will now automatically detect your new timezone, and then update the time and date accordingly.
Honestly, the most noticeable change was that the font changed on the tabs and URL bar.
I know- it's so terrible to have a sub-$200 laptop that boots in seconds and that has everything stored in the cloud so if my kids break it I can replace it trivially.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
No? Watching http://trailers.divx.com/divx_... just fine on my Acer C720; CPU hasn't bumped over over 40%.
you're only giving google a head start on tracking your kids' every move online. not the greatest move a parent can make.
Come on Stallman, no shame in posting under a name.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
In actual reality, I went to amazon.com, typed "Chromebook", selected OS: "Chrome OS", then sorted by price resulting in 14 models below the $200 mark
The remaining 5% makes me money. So yes, it is that important to me.
Then don't buy a Chromebook. It is not a professional workstation. I don't have one either. But my kids do. Chromebooks are also popular with schools. They are cheap, and are difficult for students to screw up, because ... well because there is nothing on them. But if all you need is a broswer and Google docs, they are fine. You can buy five of them for the price of a Macbook.
I love my Chromebook. I use Chrubuntu and/or Chroots in developer mode when I'm not traveling. The ARM architecture has incidentally given me an incentive to become much better at compiling from binary. If you don't want to do that: there are plenty of x86/x64 Chromebooks to choose from.
Every time I go to the airport I powerwash my device and reinstall from .tar.gz backups when I get home.
ChromeOS is lovely, it always makes me a little sad when I have occasion to go back to XFCE or LXDE as my primary on-boot.
>>Could you imagine a prospective employee showing up to an interview with a P.O.S chromebook instead of a macbook?
Depends on the job person is applying to. If in the course of work his only tool is browser - then chromebook is a sign that this person knows his stuff and doesn't feel uncontrollable compultion to buy bling-bling stuff just because it's trendy and cool.
The supposed source Ivan Gotyaovich does not appear to be exist, and the "Gotya" is a bit of a hint.
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Contextless, textless, unlabelled icons I take it then?
No separation of data using small 1 pixel width dividing lines, shading, or anything really, just one big flat white (or whatever colour they choose) mess?
Difficulty in easily identifying data because it's not highlighted or accentuated in any particular way?
Yep, love that material design. It's clever stuff.
laptops already have a fairly well defined meaning in people's minds from the fact that laptops have been around for 20+ years.
Yup. A clamshell design with a screen on the top and a keyboard on the bottom. For most of those 20 years though a laptop also meant it costs half the price of a reasonable car, weighs 10 pounds, has 45 minutes of battery life and zero capability until you bought software separately from a store. Trust me, consumers HATED those things. These new devices have more Gees so are like 5 times more capable!
Out of interest, do you have any evidence that they are tracking people's every move online? I think it would be a big scandal if it were true.
For example, obviously they scan Gmail accounts to deliver targeted advertising, but do you have evidence that if you use a Yahoo email account they monitor the content of your email?
What about your Facebook posts, do they read those? Or your online banking sessions, do they track them?
Or did you mean something else by "tracking your kids' every move"?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There are plenty of good options for a small laptop there. Personally I have a desktop computer that can do all the great things I want it to. For a laptop I wanted something small and light that I wouldn't have to worry about. A 13in Chromebook worked perfectly for that. I never use it for gaming or image development, usually just web browsing and email. Occasionally I'll do some development by SSHing into a Linux box, and if I really want to do something more intensive, I can remote desktop to my machine at home. It takes 6 seconds to boot, updates also take 6 seconds (and my windows are opened after), and it doesn't get loaded down with crapware. Worst case I can do a factory reset.
Now I realize some people want a mobile primary computer and this isn't the machine for them. Judging by the tablet market, people are quite happy to get machines that do one thing, so maybe it would be better if you saw this as a cheap tablet with a keyboard and USB ports.
Why is someone taking a laptop into an interview?
Because I already own the fucking video. What would you do, convert it just because "hey it ain't fittin'"?
I can watch 1080p MKVs on my crappy Samsung S4 Mini without a hitch, it works, doesn't consume much power (30% battery for a 2h long movie is pretty darn good) and yeah the phone resolution is crap but I don't care. I care about playing the damn video.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Unless you're taking a course in programming or programming as a professional, you don't really need a computer for computing.
Even for learning programming, a Chromebook is good enough. At my neighborhood school they start teaching Scratch in 4th grade. It runs in a browser. For older kids, they move on to the Khan Academy programming lessons, which use JavaScript, which also runs in a browser. A "real" computer isn't needed until high school, for the 5% of the students that take AP-CS, which uses Java.
burden of proof is on the person who made the assertion ("chromeos pants heavily when you watch a 1080p MKV on it"). :)
I asserted that "an obsolete video format knowing that nobody uses DivX or considers it a viable codec any more" plays just fine, and it does. :)