Chrome OS Cr-48 — First Impressions

A couple weeks ago I was on the Google Pilot website There was a form to fill out if you wanted to be part of the Chrome OS pilot project.  My first thought was “Hey, free laptop… let me fill that out.”  I honestly wasn’t thinking more than that.  I am a bit of a Ludite, probably more than any developer should be.  So, I was curious about ChromeOS, but it wasn’t my driving motivation in filling out the form.

In fact, after I got done with the form I thought “Man, there really isn’t anything there that separates me from someone else.”  I didn’t even know there was a video, much less figure out there was a mathematical problem in the video. In fact, even if I KNEW there was a problem in the video, I likely wouldn’t have solved it.

So imagine my surprise this afternoon when my wife sent me a text asking if my dad or work would have sent me something in the mail. I was confused so when we talked I found out there was something (and apparently it was a big deal) that came in the mail today.  She was hesitant to tell me that it was a laptop because she didn’t want to ruin someone’s present if it was a Christmas gift.  I sat there for a couple minutes before it dawned on me that it was a Chome laptop.

As I got home today, I couldn’t wait to fire it up.  It was amazingly simple.  Solid black, no markings on the case.  I hooked it up and plugged it in.  It booted up right away and one of the first things it did was ask me to connect to the network.  After it did that, it downloaded the latest updates to the OS.

As I signed in with my gmail address & password I was greeted with Google Chrome. That wasn’t too surprising.  I’ve been using Chrome as my default browser since the day it came out.

What has taken me some time to get used to is that there is no other screens.  I’ve been downloading apps from the Chrome store, and doing searches for how to various things on the CR-48.

Perhaps the most impressive features so far have been the integrated web controls.  My uses her netbook almost constantly and she liked the idea of the search button and the forward/back buttons as well.

I’ll post more as I use it more.  I wonder if I’ll ever shake the feeling of it being wrong to not have any interface BEHIND my web browser?