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Google Chrome OS review: First Look

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Google OS is clearly an exercise in subtlety, and its approach is a departure not just from Windows but from conventional Linux as well. Its stripped down approach looks as though it will deliver the experience that Google claims it will but it’s hard to be too impressed at this early stage.

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4 comments

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Speed...

I installed it on my iMac under VMWare Fusion 3.0. It took around 12 seconds to boot on that (2.2Ghz C2D, 2GB RAM, with the VM having 768MB and both cores to play with). It was incredibly slow, I also have Ubuntu 9.10 in a VM (512MB RAM and 1 core allowed) and Firefox in Ubuntu flies compared to Chrome OS! So much for less code offering more speed! It is very picky in Fusion - as well as "bridged", I needed to specify which adapter, Automatic won't work! Also, if you forget to bridge or you don't select the adapter, you need to rebuild the VM. If Chrome OS doesn't find a working network on first boot, it will never find a working network, no matter what you do to the VM settings! I think I had to rebuild the VM 3 times before it found the network adapter. Chrome OS also seems to get confused if you jump out of the VM and come back again, a couple of times the Ctrl key got "stuck"... It is an interesting experiment, but I think it is ahead of its time, we need better network availability and more reliability. I like the cloud, but I wouldn't trust my data to it, alone. I use a hybrid. I have 3 machines I use regularly and they are all synchronised over the cloud, but the data doesn't sit only in the cloud. A web browser is fine, but some things (Email, chat, Twitter, Office etc.) are still better with "fat" clients. The Web experience needs to improve somewhat (and maybe move beyond HTML), before it will be an adequate replacement for ALL fat apps. For an easy to use web browser based machine, it will be fine. For full blooded working environments, it has a way to go - there an RDP or Citrix thin client is still a better bet...

By big_D on Friday Nov 27

ummm...

takes less than 4seconds for my system to load it. from time I press power to splash. I've only tried it on a fast machine and I also didn't need to set bridged adapter... it just worked. It is very, very limited and about the only time I'd ever use it as it stands - on a pc I mean - is if I was travelling and wanted to use a secured computer to access the internet - plug in the USB and go. Or if I want someone to use one of my computers with sensitive info to access the net only.

By IhamMhee on Friday Mar 19

Are we ready for this?

I'm still undecided. Check out my post for some more insight on ChromeOS: http://whatsnottaken.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/are-you-ready-for-chromium-os/

By bsilverop on Friday Jan 21