Well, Friday it came: my sweet CR-48. There are benefits to having a brother on the Chrome team - I get to beta test one of Google's new Chromium OS laptops.
First off, it started right up - like as soon as I put in the battery, plugged it in, and pressed the power button. It found our wireless almost instantly, asked for the key, then asked me to "log in." Logging in on a CR-48 means signing into your Gmail account. (There is an option to login as a guest.) It asked me if I wanted to take a photo with the on-board camera to act as my "account" photo, and that was it - the machine was set up. We're talking less than two minutes.
It takes a bit to get used to; you do EVERYTHING from within a Chrome browser window. Some "apps" were already installed, but even those run within the browser. There is an app shop (so far I have only installed free apps) and there seem to be a lot of them. I grabbed a couple games (Namco's Butterfly Mahjong is my favorite so far) and a nice simple photo editor called Pixlr EXpress. Then I discovered Picasa can do the simple stuff right online!
The hardware is plain; I miss the "Delete", "End", and "Home" keys which are missing from the keyboard. The "Giant Touch Pad" (so labled in the sparse documentation) is annoying but I am getting used to it. I will take advantage of the USB port and toss a mouse on there when I get to work tomorrow. There is an on-board camera, speakers, and microphone. The speaker volume is a little low for my taste, but there is a headphone jack.
The computer sleeps the second you close the lid, and resumes instantly when you open the lid. I mean, INSTANTLY. It is amazing. I've also never used such a stable computer. (Granted, I am a PC user...) It never seems to crash - I feel a little guilty because I've used it steadily for two days now and not had any real bugs to report. It has awesome battery life too - I use it for hours (like 5-6?) without it being plugged in, and did not come close to exhausting the battery.
The thing is the hardest to get used to is the file system. Since you don't install stuff, it feels like no effort put into the navigation. I wanted to upload a photo (which I had downloaded) but couldn't figure out how to navigate to the "downloads" folder. There doesn't seem to be a hierarchy but rather a long list of non-friendly-named folders. Again, since the point is to "live on the web," I expect this was by design but this could be the one "downfall" for CR-48 notebooks. I wonder if, by "launch", there will be an easier way to download/upload files.
There is a slot on the side that fits a SD card, but it has no functionality.
The notebook comes with 100 MB per month data free from Verizon (for two years) which is totally cool.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
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