Google's First Chrome OS Laptop Preview

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Engadget has posted a hands-on preview of Google's Cr-48 laptop. This is a basic overview of the Cr-48’s features with an embedded video, no performance information, tests or benchmarks...but still worth checking out.

Well, would you look at what showed up on our frigid doorstep this morning? That's right, we are now the proud owners of Google's first Chrome OS laptop -- the Cr-48. Obviously, we ripped open the box and got right to handling the 12.1-inch, Atom-powered laptop. So, what does the thing feel like? How's that keyboard? And more importantly, how's Chrome OS looking?
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Bleeoooop bleep.

Skynet Activated.

Bee-doop. Bwwooooooooop.

Nah just kidding hahaha.... it looks sleek and minimalistic, very nice!
 
Only bad thing I see for this cheap netbook....
Flash is really bad, both with general applications and particularly with video. Adobe hasn't built Flash acceleration yet for Linux, and there's not a hardware acceleration chip, either. Hulu is like a slideshow, YouTube works, but not great.
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I'm sure they will fix it... that's prob the reason the GoogleOS crew are doing this "free beta test" kind of thing eh?
 
Dylan80 said:
Only bad thing I see for this cheap netbook....

I'm sure they will fix it... that's prob the reason the GoogleOS crew are doing this "free beta test" kind of thing eh?
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Its Adobe, who knows if they will ever bother to fix anything or if they'll just ignore it.
 
I signed up to see if I could get one of these for development purposes.
 
bloodhawke83 said:
how much?

where can i download GoogleOS?
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It's free... Don't use that spammer link 2 posts above, that download is very sketchy from an unreliable (and probably trojan infested) version.

You can signup for this laptop here from Google's site:

http://www.google.com/chromeos/


.........and if you want the Google operating system for free (it's always been free) go here to google's Chromium website and read the instructions:

http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/testing
 
after reading the article it appears the word of the day is ' impress '

so i must ask:

If I strike someone in the head with it, will impressing the impression be more impressive than the impression impressed ?
 
weebling1 said:
after reading the article it appears the word of the day is ' impress '

so i must ask:

If I strike someone in the head with it, will impressing the impression be more impressive than the impression impressed ?
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Impressive.
 
it's a nice looking netbook.

but unless it's cheaper than a windows netbook, i aint interested.
 
dr.kevin said:
but unless it's cheaper than a windows netbook, i aint interested.
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The free internet is worth at least a hundred bucks. Some of the specs, such as the LCD, may exceed that of netbooks. But, these computers, at least the CR-48 model, are probably crippled to prevent them from being turned into windows machines (e.g. tiny SSDs, no more than 1GB RAM). Interestingly, the review doesn't tell us much about the hardware specs. But, the 3rd-party production machines could be beefier than the CR-48s.

On the other hand, not coming with Windows lowers their value by at least fifty bucks.
 
too limited for my tastes, maybe for a simple internet-only person it would work. The free data from Verizon is a nice touch
 
I laugh that youtube performs poorly on it. here's a slogan they can drop like its hot! "we're so confident in chrome's performance we don't feel the need to make it compatible with our own websites".

what's next are they gonna release their own video plugin and switch youtube over allowing chrome os to have some exclusive features?
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
I wonder how it performs on Youtube in HTML5 mode instead of Flash mode.
 
Is it possible to run Google's OS on Microsoft's Virtual PC?
I'd love to try out that OS
 
Mentioned this in another thread but I swear to god this is one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen in my entire life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-Vnx58UYo

Google shows off what cloud computing benefits can do for you by obliterating a few Cr-48 laptops in fairly creative ways. Almost spit out my breakfast over this one, the guy's reactions are priceless I swear. Such deadpan acting...

BRILLIANT! :D
 
Out of curiosity, I'd like to know which Intel Atom cpu and how much ram this system has. Haven't seen anyone report on that yet.
 
Stone Cold said:
The free internet is worth at least a hundred bucks. Some of the specs, such as the LCD, may exceed that of netbooks. But, these computers, at least the CR-48 model, are probably crippled to prevent them from being turned into windows machines (e.g. tiny SSDs, no more than 1GB RAM). Interestingly, the review doesn't tell us much about the hardware specs. But, the 3rd-party production machines could be beefier than the CR-48s.

On the other hand, not coming with Windows lowers their value by at least fifty bucks.
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Then it's not free, ain't it? ;)
 
100MB a month of free 3G Internet service is worth $50 a month? What is that guy smoking?
 
Bahamut said:
Mentioned this in another thread but I swear to god this is one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen in my entire life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-Vnx58UYo

Google shows off what cloud computing benefits can do for you by obliterating a few Cr-48 laptops in fairly creative ways. Almost spit out my breakfast over this one, the guy's reactions are priceless I swear. Such deadpan acting...

BRILLIANT! :D
Click to expand...

Would have been cheaper to just buy a new cat.
Click to expand...

hahahaha
 
Still a variation of gOS they had 3 yrs ago. Poor at best.

Quote of the article:
We can already see some reasons why particularly browser-bound folks might consider this over a netbook, but for most people we'd say Google has a long ways to go to create a true netbook or laptop alternative
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I had one arrive on my doorstep this morning, my impressions are about the same as others so far. I've been trying to gather up the specs, here's what I've got so far:

-Screen is 1280x800, matte finish. Not as bright as I'd like, but certainly much better than the 1024x600 you usually get on a netbook.
-Storage is a 16GB SSD, haven't really been able to test I/O performance yet though.
-Processor is an Atom, I've read some reports saying it's an N455, some saying N550.
-Unknown amount of memory, presumably 1GB.
-3g from Verizon as noted earlier, 100MB a month for free, cheapest option otherwise is 1GB for $20/month
-Ports: 1 USB port, 1 Headphone jack, 1 SD card slot, and VGA. No idea why they bothered with a VGA port.

It's quite snappy, booting up takes about 10 seconds from fully off, plays Youtube videos fine, handles Grooveshark and other heavy HTML5 webapps fine. Hulu, on the other hand, is a little choppy, but I'd imagine Flash performance has a lot of room to improve.
 
Anticipat3 said:
I had one arrive on my doorstep this morning, my impressions are about the same as others so far. I've been trying to gather up the specs, here's what I've got so far:

-Screen is 1280x800, matte finish. Not as bright as I'd like, but certainly much better than the 1024x600 you usually get on a netbook.
-Storage is a 16GB SSD, haven't really been able to test I/O performance yet though.
-Processor is an Atom, I've read some reports saying it's an N455, some saying N550.
-Unknown amount of memory, presumably 1GB.
-3g from Verizon as noted earlier, 100MB a month for free, cheapest option otherwise is 1GB for $20/month
-Ports: 1 USB port, 1 Headphone jack, 1 SD card slot, and VGA. No idea why they bothered with a VGA port.

It's quite snappy, booting up takes about 10 seconds from fully off, plays Youtube videos fine, handles Grooveshark and other heavy HTML5 webapps fine. Hulu, on the other hand, is a little choppy, but I'd imagine Flash performance has a lot of room to improve.
Click to expand...

Can you please go to:

http://clients.futuremark.com/peacekeeper/index.action

and run the Peacekeeper browser benchmark on that thing, please? :)

Been trying to get anyone to do it so far and of the dozens of folks that I've spoken with that got the laptop, nobody will do it. Takes a few minutes, will provide some technical information about the hardware in the laptop when it's done and provide a link where other people can then go to see the information.

It's about the closest thing to an online diagnostic as there is right now.

Please? :D
 
@Anticipat3

When you filled out the questioner for the laptop, did you get an email from them at all about it being shipped? Or did it just show up unannounced?
 
There's a chance it might not actually display any system info, unfortunately. It could be tied to the browser - Chrome - as I'm thinking they use some ActiveX gadget for that... dammit. :p
 
DOH!!! Just confirmed that by firing up IE9 beta and yep, it installs an ActiveX thingamabob to do the scan... CRAP
 
Mathemabeat said:
@Anticipat3

When you filled out the questioner for the laptop, did you get an email from them at all about it being shipped? Or did it just show up unannounced?
Click to expand...

I don't even recall actually filling out a form or anything, though I've been using Chrome since it was released, and opt in to nearly every Google program that's out there. Never got an email or anything like that, it just appeared!

I create web applications for a living, and have a fair bit of code on github -- I'm guessing that could also have something to do with it.

2 minutes left on Peacekeeper benchmark, by the way.
 
Peacekeeper Score: 1479

Peacekeeper reports Chrome v8.0.552.341, but nothing else about the hardware :(
 
Yah, I had just realized that as noted above. But thanks for running it, at least we have some idea how the Cr-48 performs I suppose.
 
Updated specs after rooting it and doing some lspci etc:

CPU: Atom N455 @ 1.66ghz, single core
RAM: 2GB
Video: Intel Pineview Integrated Graphics Controller
Audio: Intel 82801G HD Audio (ICH7 family)
SATA Controller: Intel 82801GR/GH (ICH7 family) rev 02
Wireless: Atheros AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) rev 01
 
Awesome... that's about what I'd expected. I keep seeing mention of the "root" thing but nobody has posted clear-cut info (just in case UPS comes knocking on my door today, unlikely but I still hope), can you provide the basic instructions?

Kept seeing people say there's a switch in the battery compartment hidden by a piece of black tape, starts the laptop in some developer mode... ?
 
Yep, easiest root ever! After the root, you can switch VTs with Ctrl+Alt+[2, 3, 4] or get back to the browser with Ctrl+Alt+1.
 
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