A Detailed Look at Google's Cr-48 Chrome OS Notebook

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.gottabemobile.com/2010/12/10/chrome-os-cr-48-review-part-1-out-of-box-experience/' target='_blank'>http://www.gottabemobile.com/2010/1...box-experience/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Last night FedEx dropped off Google's first Chrome OS notebook. The Cr-48 isn't going to be sold to consumers, but the story here is software, not hardware. Manufacturers like Acer will likely mix things up in 2011, but for now we have a pretty straight forward device in terms of hardware and software. This is the first part of a multi-part Cr-48 review series."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/lpt/auto/1292624793.usr1.jpg" style="border: 0;" /></p><ul><li><em><a href="http://www.gottabemobile.com/2010/12/10/chrome-os-cr-48-review-part-1-out-of-box-experience/">Chrome OS Cr-48 Review Part 1: Out of Box Experience</a></em></li><li><em></em><em><a href="http://www.gottabemobile.com/2010/12/10/chrome-os-cr–48-review-part-2-verizon-3g-setup/">Chrome OS Cr&ndash;48 Review Part 2: Verizon 3G Setup</a></em></li><li><a href="http://www.gottabemobile.com/2010/12/13/chrome-os-cr–48-review-part-3-ports-and-photo-gallery/"><em></em><em>Chrome OS Cr&ndash;48 Review Part 3: Ports and Photo Gallery</em></a></li><li><em><a href="http://www.gottabemobile.com/2010/12/15/chrome-os-cr-48-wont-bu/" target="_blank">Chrome OS Cr-48 Review Part 4: 10 Reasons People Won&rsquo;t Buy This Notebook</a></em></li></ul><p>My friend Xavier did a great job tackling every part of the Cr-48 - the hardware, the software, the overall experience, and some of the challenges that Google has to overcome with selling a product like this. We'll see if the hardware designs by Google's OEM partners are sexy enough to go up against the Windows netbooks on the market - but the biggest hurdle is the whole "cloud" aspect. I know we're moving in that direction, but is the market ready for a device like this? Would you buy one if it was netbook-priced?</p>

[Macguy59]

I must be missing something. Isn't this another attempt at dumb terminal computing ?

[Jason Dunn]

I must be missing something. Isn't this another attempt at dumb terminal computing ?

Duuuuude....it's the clouuuuuuuuuuuuud. It's, like, TOTALLY different. :D

[crimsonsky]

I made the observation earlier on Twitter that what comes around goes around. This is in fact a return to dumb terminals - it's just that the cloud is the mainframe. Personally, I'm not buying into it. 100% uptime and access is not guaranteed. I agree totally with Part 4 and I'd only buy such a machine if it were $99 - maybe.

[Michael Knutson]

Looking at this from an enterprise perspective, this is indeed a return to the 'thin client.' Simply a newer and slightly different destination for the client, and the 'green screen' text-only apps are replaced by something more modern. Think about the ease of managing this device. It fails, swap it out. Nothing lost. In the office, management becomes a no-brainer. and, the cloud CAN be a company intranet. Sun tried this with their Sunray, running everything in Firefox, but it was slow, and the build quality was awful (I know, I was a beta tester). Fail. The concept is an IT Manager's dream if/when it works. Working at a company with 75K users, this would be very attractive to the decision-makers.

That being said, as an end-user device for 'home and/or mobile' computing, until every square meter of the planet is connected, it will remain a niche product. Offering a token amount of data transfer is a good start, but until this becomes realistic (unlimited capacity at a reasonable price), North America simply has too many dead areas for this to be viable (without some form of supported persistent local storage).

I like the $99 idea! But, what is Google's real direction here? Selling to companies first is my guess.

[Michael Knutson]

I got in my request to Google this afternoon for a CR-48. Wish me luck!