Well hello there! It’s been quite a while since I wrote for The Droids, and there’s a good reason for that. I bid Android adieu when the iPhone 4 came out, and as I said to Benjamin before I left, I’ll probably be back for version 3.0. I absolutely love Android and miss many of its features quite a bit, but for day-to-day usability, it still hasn’t caught up with iOS, though that’s changing.
So why am I doing a Chrome Notebook review? Well Chrome OS is the distant cousin of Android, and represents a shift in the way we think about our computers. Plus, it’s another horse in Google’s mobile computing stable.
I am actually pretty surprised that I got a CR-48. I applied on a lark. I’m never picked for sweepstakes or surveys and I never win anything. I applied twice, once on behalf of the school where I work, and once on behalf of my wife who uses all sorts of Google services (oh who am I kidding, it was for me). Seven days later, I came to find a CR-48 on my doorstep – no email telling me I was accepted, no UPS tracking number, no anticipation.
Really, that’s the part I love. Getting this thing was a total surprise.
Overview
So in case you hadn’t heard, Google’s going official, if not public with their new operating system, Chrome OS. Chrome OS has been available for quite a while now, if you were adventurous enough to try and dual-boot it on your own computer.
For Google’s launch of the quasi-public beta, they chose to put it out there on hardware tailored for the current and future builds of Chrome OS. Thus, the CR-48.
So far, it seems that Google has sent out between 7-10,000 of its 60,000 test units. You can still apply for one here.
Packaging
The packaging of the CR-48 reinforces the prototypical nature of the device. The box features a quirky and humorous exploded diagram of a jet engine apparently powered by a hampster. The directions for the device are peppered with humor: “Read this paper. Then recycle it. Or make it into a super cool paper airplane that you can give to your nephew,” “You can try opening the panel with one hand, but that goes into extreme display opening and may be frowned upon by someone special in your life,” “This product contains small parts, which may present a choking hazard to small children, as well as to men who have not emotionally matured.” Everything in the packaging is raw recycled cardboard. There’s no manual – but then, the CR-48 doesn’t really need one.
Compare this with the packaging for the Nexus One, which was professional, inviting, and definitely ready-for-retail, and it’s apparent that this product is not meant for the public.
Hardware
The minimalism of the Chrome CR-48 is rather polarizing. I happen to fall on the less-is-more side of things. The no-logo mystery of the laptop is beguiling, and will undoubtedly result in plenty of “what kind of laptop is THAT?” when people see me using it.
It’s thin, not Macbook Air thin, but it’s much easer to carry around than my 13” Macbook Pro.
People’s first impression of the laptop is typically to compare it to a Macbook; indeed, the chiclet-style keyboard (which Apple lifted from Sony) is most frequently seen on Apple’s offerings, and the hinge, magnetic closure and finger-latch are straight out of Jonny Ive’s manual of style.
Of course, the CR-48 is much less featured than any Macbook. It sports a VGA port on the left side, a headphone, single USB, and power port on the right side are joined by a cleverly-concealed SD card slot.
Google calls the CR-48 a notebook, likely because its 12.8”, 1280×800 screen plants it firmly outside the physical dimensions of typical netbooks. Inside, however, the hardware is fairly standard netbook fare: a 1.66 GHz, single-core Atom processor is paired with 2GB of RAM, some kind of GPU (there is a reference to GPU support in the “stats for nerds” section of the activity monitor, and it may be an Intel GMA3150 chipset), and a surprisingly large 16GB SSD.
The SSD is the most interesting thing about this whole machine. Chrome’s operating system couldn’t possibly be larger than 1GB, and the storage in the computer is meant to cache offline content. Question is, what would you need 16GB of cached content for? I think this points to the possibility that apps will grow in complexity, and Chrome OS may not be web-only forever.
Overall, the hardware of the laptop seems to be of high build quality. There’s no flex when the laptop is held one-handed, the hinge for the screen is firm and tight but not overly so, and the keyboard is on par with Apple’s chiclets. The only quality issue I noticed is a minor tendency of the battery’s top left corner to sag out of its socket a bit when the laptop is on your lap. It isn’t that noticable and doesn’t put the battery in any danger of falling out.
The rubberized coating does not seem to be a very durable choice. Granted, it looks great at first, giving the laptop the air of a stealth fighter. But if you’ve ever seen a black Macbook after about 3 months of carrying it around and wresting one’s wrists on the top of the laptop, you’ll know how that matte finish quickly shines up in a rather ugly way, looking greasy (when, in fact it’s just a polishing of the matte finish). The coating on the CR-48 may surprise me, but I don’t have high hopes.
Software
Do you have Google Chrome on your computer? I highly recommend it. In fact, if you want to try Chrome OS, go get Chrome, and just imagine that all you can do with your computer is use Chrome. Seriously. That’s the only description that Chrome OS needs.
Sound constricting? It isn’t as bad as you think. First of all, you may have missed out on Google’s recent launch of a Web Store – with free and paid Web Apps that you can install to Chrome. While many of the apps aren’t new, and it’s been panned as a “link discovery” store, the apps in the store are growing daily and are, in many cases, much more full-featured than you’d expect. AutoDesk’s flash-based HomeStyler is an extremely slick home layout and design editor, offering 3D views and even ray-traced renders courtesy of Autodesk’s servers.
At work, I use a laptop hooked up as a desktop with a glorious 24” LED screen. I use full-force applications like Filemaker Pro, Apple Remote Desktop, MacJournal, and Microsoft Office. I typically take that laptop home, where its use is considerably different. I use it on the couch for email, browse the internet, shop online, resolve entertainment-related disputes with my wife using IMDB (hint, I’m usually wrong), and the like. I have an iMac in my office for “real” computer use. Over the last two days, I’ve used it as my “home” laptop, and I haven’t missed a thing.
So while Chrome OS wouldn’t necessarily fit into many work environments, it seems like the purest representation of what a netbook should be.
Setup
Setup was very simple, I just had to sign in with my google account. I used it for a while, and after poking around I found that an update was available. After the update, I found that a fewvisual elements had been tweaked, and Chrome Sync engaged, populating the links from my desktop computer onto the CR-48. A very neat trick, indeed.
I set myself up for the free Verizon data plan, which interestingly wasn’t available the first day I booted up, but today worked fine. Interestingly, it appears that I’ll have to activate it every month, as it mentioned that my “plan” expires on 1/15/2011.
Performance
The marriage between an ultra lightweight operating system and fairly lightweight hardware specs is, as you might imagine, not a top performer. This has been covered by other reviews, but the experience isn’t quite as snappy as you might expect from a “real” computer. Scrolling can be a little choppy, but I haven’t noticed any text-entry lag that was mentioned in some reviews. I think this may be owing to yesterday’s software update.
Now let’s talk about Flash. It’s been mentioned numerous times that Flash sucks on Chrome OS. For Flash video, it does, to the point of being unusable. However, other flash-intensive uses are plenty usable. The aforementioned Autodesk Homestyler is one big Flash app, and it is perfectly usable, albeit laggy in 3D mode, but it performs, I would say, 75% as well as it does on my Macbook Pro.
The thing to remember about Flash on Chrome OS is that it’s built on Linux, and Linux doesn’t have a hardware-accelerated h.264 API, meaning it can’t use CPU or GPU hardware directly to decode most flash video. Adobe has acknowledged this and I’m sure in future versions of Chrome OS we’ll see performance improvements.
Overall, the software feels rock-solid and extremely responsive overall. The mouse has been complained about, and if you turn off tap-to-click, it’s perfectly tolerable, though it works a little strangely from time to time. Scrolling can be overly sensitive and a little goofy, but I’m sure this is a software thing and will be fixed.
Verdict
I’m really digging this little laptop. Using it is completely inoffensive and it works beautifully for what it is – an Internet portal. It’s not perfect, but Google never said it would be.
For this piece, I shot some pictures of the CR-48 and its packaging, and uploaded them to Picasa Web Albums. This was no easy task. Chrome OS doesn’t give you explicit or clear access to the file system, which keeps with the online-only theme. However, what happens when you pop an SD card in? Um, nothing. So I opened up Picasa Web Albums, created an album, and tried to upload to it. A file browser showed up, in a folder which contained screenshots from bug reports I’d submitted. There were no controls, no way to go up one level, no way to find my SD card. So I “installed” picknik photo editor, and behold, when I chose upload from that webapp, a very Ubuntu-esque file browser presented itself. Being familiar with Linux, I was able to find my SD card fairly easily, and upload pictures to Picknik, but I couldn’t see a thumbnail preview, so I was hunting around blind for the right file. Then I had to save the files, at which point I hunted around and found the folder where Picasa was stuck looking (it was the Downloads folder, as it turned out). Once I saved the photos there, it was easy to upload them.
When it comes to photos and documents coming from a non-cloud computer, you’re going to need access to files, and you’re going to want creature comforts like thumbnail previews of images. There’s no reason that the full version of Picasa couldn’t be reworked to run on Chrome OS, even in a tab. That needs to happen if Chrome OS is going to be useful for creating content, not just consuming it. There obviously is a framework for file browsing, because Picknik had access to the full file system. It just needs to be more slickly and universally used.
The CR-48 has a GPU, and it needs to start using it. Google needs to work with Adobe and Microsoft to get Flash and Silverlight working well on Chrome OS. If I could watch YouTube, Hulu and Netflix, and if I could work with photos on the CR-48, it would give the iPad a run for its money. Oh, and Google, dual-booting to Anrdoid would be really cool.
I don’t think I have to give this thing back so I’m glad to watch its evolution right in front of me.
Written on a CR-48 with Google Docs
