I put in an application and I am crossing my fingers. It looks a bit like EJiffy, the packaged quick boot Linux OS that ECS packs with some of their motherboards. EJiffy is pretty cool as a general use, fast boot OS, I just want to look at my email, send Mom a picture of the kid, and get one with my life. It looks like Chrome OS takes this concept to the next step. Its the natural evolution of PC's if you ask me. Web delivered apps are appropriate for 90% of what we do, its that other 10% that is the trick. I think its closer than most think. Gaming, CAD, Photoshop, Final Cut, its all going to be web delivered in just a few years. In a dozen or so, the kids wont even know what a hard drive is.
Then our entire geek culture is essentially dead. If all the processing is done in the datacenter, and we all access the cloud with thin clients in various forms, we won't be able to tweak, twiddle, overclock, or upgrade.
The 10% is going to be no more dead in 2020 than it was in 2010 and 2000. People keep predicting this, but they never even look at the fact that the infrastructure hasn't moved one inch closer to enabling it. There's a reason why we're all still puttering around on broadband connections in the mid-teens from ISPs that continue to squabble about <i>reducing</i> our consumption, an argument that is totally antithetical to moving into the cloud.
It's weird; I'm somewhere in between both worlds right now. On my desk at this very moment I have one of the most powerful laptops in the world sitting next to one of the most lean laptops in the world.
The HP EliteBook 8740W does things the CR-48 cannot hope to ever pull off, like video production and Steam gaming, DxO Optics Pro photo processing, and Adobe Creative Suite.
The CR-48 lasts hours upon hours and easily gets on the net for text-based tasks. It has no complicated OS or filesystem, and every single thing is done in the cloud. I can't even save a document to a Flash drive. If I threw it off a bridge, it wouldn't matter, all my data would be safe.
Two wildly different paradigms. It's a strange feeling.
Then our entire geek culture is essentially dead. If all the processing is done in the datacenter, and we all access the cloud with thin clients in various forms, we won't be able to tweak, twiddle, overclock, or upgrade.
Nay, it would be the dawn of the supergeek... all the tweaking, twiddling and whatnot would be happening in the datacenter instead of in mom's basement.
If Google could essentially take Microsoft's position in the OS market, do you think they may make a few infrastructure investments to make more powerful web delivered applications available?
I'm just sayin, they are not just doing this so they can fill a little niche market, these guys are looking to take over. Google will pretend that they aren't looking to get into the wider OS business, they will launch it as if its a little niche product, but as the app catalog grows, and you get the first couple percent of market share, its going to grow, and I think Google has shown they are not afraid to spend their cash reserves.
I'm more optimistic, I'd guess in five years, computing as we know it is going to be entirely different.
I wouldn't call hoping for everything to be moved to the cloud to be optimistic. I've had too many problems with not being able to get a good Internet connection even in the middle of a major city to rely on the cloud for much. The day that I can no longer use my computer at all without being connected to the cloud will be a sad day indeed.
That said, I don't mind this as a secondary machine, used for basic on-the-go connectivity... it would never replace my regular laptop/desktop though.
I wouldn't call hoping for everything to be moved to the cloud to be optimistic. I've had too many problems with not being able to get a good Internet connection even in the middle of a major city to rely on the cloud for much. The day that I can no longer use my computer at all without being connected to the cloud will be a sad day indeed.
That said, I don't mind this as a secondary machine, used for basic on-the-go connectivity... it would never replace my regular laptop/desktop though.
But you are thinking about the model as it is. Got to think forward a few years. I'm not going to say Thrax argument does not add up, everything he says makes sense as things are, but if you are a company like Google, and your future innovation and business model lives in the cloud, you just might shake and move to make the internet a little more reliable? I have faith that this is the future, and its not going to suck, its going to mean cheap and easily obtainable computing for everyone, its going to be more efficient, its going to change how we do everything. Its going to take some time, but I really think this is the future. Will there still be a niche market for the enthusiast that wants to build his own desktop? I bet there will be for many years to come, but it will become less practical to the point where it will no longer be justifiable. That may take a long time, but it is going to happen.
Google can only make things so reliable without taking over the Internet from end to end, which even they don't have the resources to do. As long as Comcast/AT&T/Verizon/whatever-other-ISP continues to provide poor last-mile service at overinflated prices, cloud computing will not replace local computing completely... call me a cynic if you must, but I don't see the day of the ISPs changing their song-and-dance coming any time soon (read: ever) in this country anyway.
So, a year and change later, how do we feel about this now?
Google sent me 3 of these things in the middle of last year. 1 I kept, 1 I gave to my girlfriend and 1 I gave away to a random friend of mine. I find that I rarely use the damn thing anymore. Only time I pull it out is when I'm in bed and need to check my email, social media sites or something simple like that. Girlfriend liked having it when she went on vacation because she could check her email easily from it.
Recent ChromeOS updates have made it balls slow for me. I also have problems with it not remembering settings for sites that store things locally (especially through flash). Quite frankly, I see this whole thing as a huge flop from my perspective. I'd never pay for one of these and it would definitely never replace a real laptop for me. It would be another device that really doesn't do anything more than what I already have. Especially now that Ultrabooks are coming out that are just as thin and light, have comparable battery life, can run an OS that isn't just a browser and have far more horsepower.
Comments
And lol: doing the speed test used 3 of my 100mb. 97 to go!
Must be your area. Did one with mine here in Ann Arbor (2-3 bars, indoors) and got 1.45Mbit
The HP EliteBook 8740W does things the CR-48 cannot hope to ever pull off, like video production and Steam gaming, DxO Optics Pro photo processing, and Adobe Creative Suite.
The CR-48 lasts hours upon hours and easily gets on the net for text-based tasks. It has no complicated OS or filesystem, and every single thing is done in the cloud. I can't even save a document to a Flash drive. If I threw it off a bridge, it wouldn't matter, all my data would be safe.
Two wildly different paradigms. It's a strange feeling.
Nay, it would be the dawn of the supergeek... all the tweaking, twiddling and whatnot would be happening in the datacenter instead of in mom's basement.
I don't really believe any of this.
I'm just sayin, they are not just doing this so they can fill a little niche market, these guys are looking to take over. Google will pretend that they aren't looking to get into the wider OS business, they will launch it as if its a little niche product, but as the app catalog grows, and you get the first couple percent of market share, its going to grow, and I think Google has shown they are not afraid to spend their cash reserves.
I'm more optimistic, I'd guess in five years, computing as we know it is going to be entirely different.
That said, I don't mind this as a secondary machine, used for basic on-the-go connectivity... it would never replace my regular laptop/desktop though.
But you are thinking about the model as it is. Got to think forward a few years. I'm not going to say Thrax argument does not add up, everything he says makes sense as things are, but if you are a company like Google, and your future innovation and business model lives in the cloud, you just might shake and move to make the internet a little more reliable? I have faith that this is the future, and its not going to suck, its going to mean cheap and easily obtainable computing for everyone, its going to be more efficient, its going to change how we do everything. Its going to take some time, but I really think this is the future. Will there still be a niche market for the enthusiast that wants to build his own desktop? I bet there will be for many years to come, but it will become less practical to the point where it will no longer be justifiable. That may take a long time, but it is going to happen.
Google sent me 3 of these things in the middle of last year. 1 I kept, 1 I gave to my girlfriend and 1 I gave away to a random friend of mine. I find that I rarely use the damn thing anymore. Only time I pull it out is when I'm in bed and need to check my email, social media sites or something simple like that. Girlfriend liked having it when she went on vacation because she could check her email easily from it.
Recent ChromeOS updates have made it balls slow for me. I also have problems with it not remembering settings for sites that store things locally (especially through flash). Quite frankly, I see this whole thing as a huge flop from my perspective. I'd never pay for one of these and it would definitely never replace a real laptop for me. It would be another device that really doesn't do anything more than what I already have. Especially now that Ultrabooks are coming out that are just as thin and light, have comparable battery life, can run an OS that isn't just a browser and have far more horsepower.
Right now, I'm waiting for a writeup an acquaintance of mine is working on which gets Android ICS running on it.