Google’s Cr-48 netbook is a promising but incomplete step toward a life lived fully on the internet.
It’s not a consumer laptop, it’s a test machine designed to showcase how Chrome OS netbooks will work. As a result, you can’t buy one, but you can sign up to get in line for Google’s pilot program.
Here are our first impressions after a few hours using the machine. A full review will follow.
The all-black Cr-48 looks like a stealth fighter. It has rubberized black surfaces, no logos anywhere and has minimal accoutrements: a built-in camera, one USB port, one video-out port, a headphone jack and a power supply. Dual-band Wi-Fi and a world-mode 3G radio are built in, as are a microphone and speakers. It has a 12.1-inch screen and a full-sized keyboard. At 3 pounds 10 ounces, it weighs more than I expected it to.
We’re still digging up specs about the guts, but some impressions: It’s pretty zippy, but not that zippy. We know there’s an Intel Pine Trail processor inside. It’s certainly as fast and responsive as you’d expect from a netbook, but it’s not nearly as fast as a MacBook Air or a reasonably equipped, sub-$1,000 laptop. While scrolling web pages, playing some web-based games and watching videos from YouTube and the Onion, I noticed some jerkiness and skipping.
Flash Player is pre-installed (and presumably sandboxed) but watching Flash videos is a bit of a sucky experience, especially in full-screen mode. But everything at least works as advertised, and it’s still totally usable.
The keyboard is full-sized, but it has some quirks. Much has been made of the Cr-48’s lack of a Caps Lock key, but it’s totally fine by us since the caps lock key is now a Search key. Press it and a new browser tab opens with the cursor in the URL/search bar, or the “omnibox” as Chrome terms it. Just start typing and you get instant search results from Google (the default engine, though Yahoo and Bing are also options).
If you miss the Caps Lock key, it can be remapped by clicking on the wrench icon in the top right. That’s where all the system settings live. You can also re-map the Alt and Ctrl keys (helpful if you’re a Mactard like me) and you can set the keyboard to swap between Dvorak and normal-person mode.
Also gone are the function keys. They’ve been replaced by browser controls (including a dedicated “refresh” button that will doubtless get a lot of use) and your standard brightness and volume controls. The trackpad is a little bigger than a credit card, and it’s the tap-to-click variety without a button. You use two fingers to right-click. Finally — and I’ve never seen this before — the letter keys are all lowercase.
It’s important to note that almost nothing is stored on this laptop. Chrome OS is just a very thin system OS with Chrome browser running on top. The desktop is gone, all you see is the browser. You log in with your Google account when you first turn it on, and it syncs up all of your settings, bookmarks and personal data through the cloud.
When I first started it up, it had a few problems connecting to the “Get Started” pages on Google’s servers. Also, we tried to connect to the Chrome Web Store and got a security alert for a certificate violation. Oops. But after logging out and logging back in as a different user, everything went smoothly.
It’s remarkably easy to log in and get started. You feed it your Google credentials and within seconds, you’re looking at a Chrome browser window. You’ve been here a million times before, and you know exactly what to do. Most of the familiar browser keyboard shortcuts are there. Ctrl-T and Ctrl-W open and close tabs. Ctrl-N launches a new workspace, and you can swap between work spaces using the key formerly known as F5.
From the time you press the Power button, it takes about 15 seconds to get to the “desktop.” All your Chrome bookmarks appear at the top of the screen, and you can start searching and browsing right away. Some biggies — Gmail, Google Talk, Google Maps, YouTube — come pre-installed. There are also two pre-installed games, Poppit and Entanglement. When I say “installed,” I basically mean there are shortcuts displayed in a grid on the default Chrome New Tab screen. Click on a candy-flavored icon and a web page launches in that tab.
As a cloud-dependent netbook, the Cr-48 does not fare so well without a net connection. I disconnected from the office Wi-Fi and, after about a 30-second pause, I was able to keep using some apps in offline mode.
However, Google Docs doesn’t have offline mode, so you can’t edit documents without a connection. (Google Docs’ offline mode is being reworked and will be back in early 2011, says Google, and presumably this won’t be an issue by the time Chrome OS laptops are generally available.) When I switched tabs to write a few e-mails, I found that Gmail was unresponsive, too. Instead, I played a few games of Entanglement and read a news story I had previously loaded. When I reconnected, everything turned back on in a few seconds and my Gmail inbox refreshed.
I also kicked on the 3G radio. One click connects you to Verizon’s network and brings you to a screen where you can easily configure your machine. Every Chrome OS laptop will come with free Verizon data service providing 100 MB of data per month for two years.
Back on Wi-Fi, I visited the store and installed some Chrome apps, including The New York Times, The Onion, and Tweetdeck. All of these are basically just web pages, but they’re specially tailored for Chrome users. For example, when you browse the NYT app, you don’t see the Times website. You get a customized layout that looks and feels more like an iPad app than a traditional website. It doesn’t have iPad-like smoothness, but it is tablet-esque in design.
When using apps, there are some cases when the machine definitely feels underpowered. Most websites and things like Gmail and Google Docs work with no problems and very little latency. But the Times app isn’t so smooth. The Onion’s app, which puts a big video player front and center, lags. Tweetdeck, which is a mix of Flash and HTML5, is clunky.
But this is, after all, a test machine. The Atom processor inside will probably need a boost before Chrome OS hardware hits the shelves. Otherwise, people who would be excited about a fast, web-connected portable powerhouse will be dismayed by the relative lack of muscle.
However, anyone who needs something stable, simple and fully synced that’s instantly familiar out of the box will be delighted.
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Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
