My CR-48 Laptop and Chrome OS review

Introduction

Now that I have had plenty of time to play with my new Google Cr-48 laptop, I'm ready to post the review. I have seen a lot of very biased, and negative reviews of this machine and OS, so I have chosen to focus on my experinces with the machine. Now, I'm no "fanboy" of a particular system or product, just a fan of technology in general so if you are looking for an unbiased user account of the machine, read on!

First of all, I'd like to thank Google for making this machine free to so many people. Not many vendors (if any) have gone to the trouble to get their machines out to so many people totally free of charge.

Just out of the box...

When I first pulled it out of the box, I was surprised that the machine booted up in around 8-10 seconds. Because I had no network configured yet, I logged in as a guest and attempted to connect to our WPA2 enterprise WiFi at work, but it was unsupported. Next, I noticed there is no Ethernet jack for wired connectivity, so I then attempted several times to connect to Verizon 3g, and after entering my credit card information I received an error screen to call Verizon to continue, and was unable to activate the service. I was finally able to get on an open WiFi and run a software update as the system was running a much older version of Chrome OS. Once updates were completed I was able to easily connect to the WPA2 network. Rockin!

Hardware

While the point of this machine is not the hardware - its the Google Chrome OS that is the star of the show - its hard not to mention it. The flat black finish of the machine is very handsome, the 12" display is just about the perfect size for portability while being easy on the eyes, the keyboard is not too cramped and the weight is perfect for traveling light. However, when comparing to the original Asus EEE PC, lots of I/O ports are missing. The Asus had three USB ports, an Ethernet port and an SD card slot while having only a 7" display. It would have been nice if Google included an extra USB port and an Ethernet port as there is definitely space for it, but this was most likely a cost issue.

Web Surfing

During the first few days of use, I had found that despite the little Atom processor, the machine has a very "snappy" response. I was never presented with an hourglass or found myself waiting. The speed of the Atom only becomes noticeable when several tabs are open with flash content, which is understandable. The fact that this machine even has flash support is awesome. While surfing the web, I did find that the two finger scrolling gesture of the CR-48 needs some serious work; trackpad scrolling is very jumpy and unpredictable.

Google Apps

I soon discovered the Google app store. I found tons of games, utilities, office software, you name it. I found what appeared to be a great app for SSH, but was unable to run it due to lack of Java support. For me, this presents two problems, 1: Google actually allows apps in the app store that the Chrome OS can not run, 2: no Java support. Lack of Java is huge, because there are a large number of games, and applications (especially corporate applications) that require a JVM to run. Google is hoping that the Corporate world will embrace this machine, but without Java, I do not see that happening. I installed many applications, the free Angry Birds, Tetris, and a web based Microsoft office, which is excellent. When attempting to run Google Earth, I hit another wall - Chrome OS is not supported yet. I did however get hooked on one game in

particular, "Entanglement" - a board game where one must manipulate tiles to make the path of a red line as long and tangled as possible, and has a very cool, zen-like soundtrack that seems to help with concentration.

Documents

Documents were one thing I had concerns about when using a browser based machine. Fortunately, there is a Google docs application as well as a free web-based Microsoft office suite. The one issue I had with documents is when downloading from the web, its not possible to go to the file manager and click to open your file - Chrome just does not know what to do with it. Instead of opening your document directly, one must upload the file to their web-based service of their choice. It would be nice if there was better integration here so that the file would automatically be uploaded to Google Docs or Microsoft office.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I really love this laptop. Its would be a great travel alternative to my MacBook, which is much heavier, and far to expensive to risk damage during trips, and Chrome OS could certainly handle my personal travel needs. I find its great for home use too for checking e-mail, surfing the web and playing casual games when I don't want to wait for my MacBook to boot or deal with the smaller screen on my iPhone. I can also do something I have never been able to do with my other machines - leave the house without the battery charger! There are a few flaws though, the lack of Java support is HUGE for me, documents could be better integrated, some Chrome app store apps won't run on the Chrome OS, and the Verizon 3G activation process needs some serious work. A full bash terminal in normal mode would also be nice. Fortunately these issues can all be corrected with software updates which Google frequently releases. In short, this is a great little machine that will only get better with time.

Google CR-48.. Finally!

I have finally gotten my hands on a Google Chrome CR-48 laptop. Just when I lost all hope in getting one for the beta test, or trying out Chrome OS on a standard machine, the "Google Gurus" showed up at the office with a boatload of CR-48's. I plan on posting a review after I've used it for a few more days, so stay tuned!

Solaris Express 11 - quick review

Better late than never, eh? I have finally found the time to post a quick review on Solaris 11 express. Being that my previous solaris experince was with version 7, I found this version to be (as expected) a vast improvement. I installed the OS in Oracle's own Virtualbox running on my MacBook Pro. Upon first boot of the system I was presently suprised to see the GNU Grub boot loader.

After the system fully booted, I was suprised again at the amount of open source software that has made it into Solaris. The Gnome desktop that Redhat and Ubuntu users are all to familar with is standard. Other open software such as Firefox, Transmission, Pidgin, Thunderbird, and many others have all made it into the default installation, which was hardly something I expected from a distribution I previously regarded as a hard core, server OS. This could serve as a workstation or desktop OS as well. There is even a GUI software installation tool.

Desktop Screenshot:

Once I dug a bit further into the OS, I found that the similarities with familiar freeware linux distos quickly stopped. Some of the key features I discovered were zone based virtualization and the ZFS file system.

Features of the ZFS file system include snapshots, which basically takes a read-only picture of your system at a given point in time, to which you can restore your machine in the event of a failure. Similar to Apple's Time Machine, Solaris includes a tool called Time Slider which can manage these snapshots, and take automated snapshots if you'd like. ZFS also includes features such as a nearly unlimited maximum file size (16 EB). It is a 128 bit filesystem as opposed to a 64 bit filesystem like NTFS, and was intended to have limits that were unlikely to ever be reached. Its very likely this is the most advanced file system available to the average user.

Solaris zones are not a new concept, but it was new to me! Zones, also referred to as containers - is a lightweight way to implement virtualization. For example, you can have anywhere from two to 8,191 virtual Solaris machines on one physical machine, as long as your hardware has the power to support it. Each additional zone can require as little as additional 50mb of hard drive space from the physical machine, or "global" zone. This can save the operator of a server farm a great deal of money in hardware and power costs.

In closing, the new Solaris is a powerful operating system. There are a great many features in the OS that I simply did not have time to dig into unfortunately. While it is possible to download it for free for evaluation purposes, I'd still reccomend a distro such as Ubuntu or Redhat for the home or causal user, due to the ease of use and the wide availability of software available for those distros, and also the licensing. While the free Solaris offering is fully featured, you can not legally use it for anything other than evaluation without purchasing it for Oracle. However, if you would like to learn Solaris or if you are like me and just enjoy poking around in various distros, feel free to download a copy and give it a shot!

Installation screenshot:

Account Setup:

Timezone Select:

Disk configuration:

Installing...

Solaris 11 Express available for download

A friend from Oracle just let me know that not only is Solaris 11 express is available, it can be downloaded by anyone on an evaluation basis. Solaris is one of the most, if not the most popular UNIX distros for enterprise servers - and now anyone is free to try it out! I'm downloading the ISO now, so expect a quick review shortly.

My first attempt at building Chrome OS from Soruce

following the instructions at http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-guide I attempted to build the chrome OS from source, because I REALLY wanted to give it a shot and was unable to find a "legit" image of it anywhere. It was unsuccessful because I ran out of disk space, but here is what I learned:

1. You need a TON of disk space to build the chroot, download the code and packages, and then generate the image. I had a 20gb Ubuntu partition with 10gb free, and that was not enough space. I even deleted my other programs to make room, and I still ran out before it was done. I'll bring more disk next time.

2. The process is bandwidth intensive, so if you have anything less than hi-speed cable, forget it. I have as much as 15mb of bandwidth here, but the downloading itself took a couple of hours.

3. The process is very hardware intensive. Most of the time, my 2009 Macbook Pro had both cores maxed out just to get by. It spent a few hours just compiling the code.

Even though I pretty much had to butcher my Ubuntu install, and still did not get the desired result, I'm willing to give it another shot, just not right now. First, I'll have to make a bigger Ubuntu partition on my MacBook, and re-install Ubuntu again.

Google is picking beta testers for Chrome Netbooks!!

Very exciting news for a geek, anyway :). Google has a new netbook called the Cr-48. Its all black, has a 12" screen, solid state hard drive, WiFi, and even G wireless from Verizon with a 100mb/day data plan... But the hardware is not the point, and is merely pre-production and the hardware isn't really the point - its the software. The Cr-48 runs the new Chrome OS, an operating system designed to do everything using web-based applications. The best part is that Google is looking for YOU to test it out before it goes into production. If your interested (who wouldn't be!) apply here http://www.google.com/chromeos/pilot-program.html

SSH + X windows = Poor Man's VPN

I recently posted about firesheep - the no skills required hacking tool that anyone using open Wifi networks could fall victim to. Well, here is a solution for that! If you have a linux machine at home, simply SSH into your machine using the -X argument which will send the interface for any graphical applications to you, as long as you are running linux, Mac OSX with X.11, or an X-windows environment like on your windows machine. When your at your coffee shop, open the command line or terminal and type "SSH your ip adddress - X" and then the command for your web browser, like Firefox, and then you will be using the firefox browser, or other application from your home PC over the secure tunnel.