Archive

Posts Tagged ‘chromeos’

Chrome OS: Nice, But Don’t Get Carried Away

November 21st, 2009
1 comment

Like some million others out there, I watched the Chrome OS Open Source presentation on several of youtube’s movies, and have mixed feelings about its use in todays world. For reference, here are some interesting videos you might want to look into.

There’s a wide variety of design documentation out in the open for you to look into, as well as the source code itself, for you to evaluate. There’s also a developer build Virtual Machine for VMware’s Player, that you can download and boot up – to get the look ‘n feel right. If you want to run it in VMware’s Server, you’ll need to convert the machine first.

Chrome OS is counting on the following events to further expand:

  • More Netbooks are being sold and used, every day
  • More users are migrating to “the cloud“, using webapplications that store all your data on outside servers (facebook, youtube, flickr, …)
  • Phones gaining computer capabilities, and laptops migrating more to phones
Trends in the industry leading to the Chrome OS

Trends in the industry leading to the Chrome OS

In Chrome OS: every application is a web application. That’s the power, and the weakness of Chrome OS. While there’s a trend of moving all applications towards the web, and I’m no big fan of it. There are the obvious advantages (easier administration, one place for storage, backups …), and the obvious disadvantages (security, lack of ownership, lack of browser capabilities, …). You’ll have your standpoint on this, I’m sure – this is just how I feel.

When is Google OS useful to you? When you donate all your privacy concerns to Google, and “migrate” to “the cloud” – using all Google Applications that run in your webbrowser. GMail, Google Docs, Wave, … are all webapplications that run great in a  browser, and it’s a focus of Google – but it’s not a focus of 95% of all the other software being developed. You’re limited with Chrome OS in ways you’ll only realize as soon as you use it. And then you’ll switch back.

Matti Tech , ,