Chrome OS

S

SRT8

Weaksauce
Joined
Nov 28, 2006
Messages
79
This OS looks great for entertainment. But I cannot take it seriously. I cannot commit to handing over all of my computer use and data information to Google.

Aside from this, it takes one virus aimed at this platform that has the potential to expose user data at an unprecendented level were this to take hold.

Google has great technology, their search is second to none, their ability to sell advertisments is second to none, their ability to garner user information in order to sell advertisments is second to none. Their backend is a work of art from a load balancing availablility aspect. Their native file system replication is pure genius.

None of that makes me trust them.

*gets off his soapbox*
 
ChromeOS will not ever replace Windows. It's more of a portable work space. The benefit is you don't have to deal with any of the normal Windows/PC BS. From a productivity standpoint, it's just what you need and nothing you don't.
 
I love Google, and it's not that I don't trust them, I just don't give them anything worth having.

I could care less if they know about my browsing history, or what kinds of items I buy. All it means is that instead of ads trying to sell me the secrets to growing my junk, I see targeted ads advertising tech certifications. No loss there.

Gmail does a decent job of keeping spam out of my inbox, and the ads that manage to make it past the ad-block extensions in Google's browser that I run are few and far between.

I just don't understand how people can fear / hate the information collectors of the web while they dump their entire lives into cyberspace. I've got a Facebook account, a blog, and half-a-dozen forums I post regularly on. And none of what's out there do I mind being distributed, or viewed by anyone. Hell, my boss is my friend on Facebook; it goes to show that I really have nothing to hide.
 
An interesting perspective about the subject of information taking - in the documentary about Josh Harris he does an experiment regarding how people will react if they are constantly under the spotlight of cameras for example and how they use that spotlight to collect data on everyone. It is called "We Live in Public" great documentary.
 
Wow, I really think many are looking through the wrong end of the telescope on this issue.
How many use Google Docs, Picassa, Gmail, GoogleTalk, Google sites, and about a dozen other free Google apps I have not listed here?
If so congratulations, Google "has" some of your data and you seem to sleep at night right?
What Chrome OS is about is the rising trend for so called "cloud" computing.
Many companies are not opting to buy expensive servers and software and whatever licencing on top of that and doing it all on "cloud based" services. My company uses NetSuite primary. It did this and almost completely abandoned a room full of servers with an overall huge savings. They broke from the vicious cycle of hardware, licensing, and IT people. The ONLY server they kept running is one for VOIP and they are finding out how unreliable that schema is unless it is cloud hosted also.
Now with a Chrome OS netbook anyone can do their 8hrs working and know all the work is safely backed up on redundant servers and a very low cost and compared to the company having to host all that data infrastructure.
Like it or not this is the trend in business. And I'm glad to see it personally. IT companies are in the business of making businesses dependant on them completely. This way they can keep the money rolling in and it is in their interest; not their customers to have them running multiple servers and a bunch of equipment that very well may soon be a obsolete way of doing things.
 
The comment in my sig pretty much covers it, because so many people just don't get it, and sadly I don't think they ever will to be honest. I'm getting to the point where faith in what people are capable of doing or becoming is just lost on 'em... :(

I've seen hundreds upon hundreds of people that post comments (not just here but at other forums) about the Cr-48 Google is giving away, most of them from people that did get accepted into the Pilot program and already have the laptops, and it seems like all any of them give a shit about it "Ok, how can I put Windows on this thing" or some other OS - Google just gave you a damned laptop in the expectation that you would use it with ChromeOS on it and help them with bug reports and comments so they can make ChromeOS a killer OS for such devices.

But no, no, that won't work for the general population. I would hazard to guess that less than 1% of the people that get those laptops actually will do what Google is asking: use it, abuse it, find out where the bugs are, tell them how to improve it, tell them how you'd like it to work, etc.

Greedy shameless maggots, that's what I think of 'em... always looking for something free and even when they get it they still complain. And the worst of them? People that apply multiple times and some of them even get more than 1 laptop by doing it. Ugh, it's pretty sickening.

</rant_had_to_do_it> :p

Anyway, we'll see what happens. But for Pete's Sake, if you get one of the Cr-48 laptops, at least have some decency and honor and actually use it as expected and submit bug reports and comments. Who knows what will happen...
 
bigdogchris said:
The benefit is you don't have to deal with any of the normal Windows/PC BS.
Click to expand...

What BS? Booting?

From a productivity standpoint, it's just what you need and nothing you don't.
Click to expand...

This I really don't get. I would much rather use real office apps to edit my document on a laptop than a bunch of marginal webapps.

This might make sense if you are one of those people who have ditched real office apps for google docs, but I don't know anyone who did that.

You could use any real OS (OSX/Linux/Windows) and simply run ChromeBrowser and do any ChromeOS lets you do, and a heck of lot more any real application you want to run.

Maybe I am old school, but it was a happy day when I stopped having to use dumb terminals and mainframes, I have no desire to go back.
 
Great discussion.

Like I said when I started this thread there is great technology here and it is great that google has excellent engineers putting it together.

What Chrome OS is about is the rising trend for so called "cloud" computing.
Click to expand...

I work on creating "Cloud" computing environments. The funny thing is the more I read reviews and talk to people, the more I realize how many different definitions of the cloud there are. For a small business, a hosted, web accessible solution works great. For a large enterprise where minutes means millions, you cannot just trust that the datacenter will be available. You want to see a write up of the technology and where they get their "9's" from starting at the power all the way out to the internet connection at the ISP.

Now with a Chrome OS netbook anyone can do their 8hrs working and know all the work is safely backed up on redundant servers and a very low cost and compared to the company having to host all that data infrastructure.
Click to expand...

This idea is what is making everyone want to trend toward this. IT is a truly wonderful thought. If you use the canned apps available from your cloud provider, then you might be able to realize savings. If you are attempting to go to the cloud with your own apps, you will be replacing your IT department with a much more expensive deveopment department, that will need a small IT department to keep them up while they develop and QA.

Being in the clound business, I have a vested interest in its well being, but I do the availabilty/failover portion of it, and know the complexities of business applications no matter the platform they run on. Cloud only complicates them, and increases the cost of running them luckily for me.

I just think diversity is good in all things. Putting all your eggs in one basket, google, is not smart. We just saw someone poisoning their ads using their logic against them. Heaven forbid a developer leave on bad terms and send a virus that wipes out the googlefs replication schema.
 
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