“Is that the Google notebook? Wow, I really like it!” That’s what everybody’s who’s seen the Cr-48 Chrome prototype says. It’s not because they love the software. More »
Boy, we know the Cr-48 is supposed to be a test platform and all, but even by that standard, Google’s Chrome OS laptop has had a very rough first day on the job. Ambushed by one of our kindly tipsters upon its arrival, the Cr-48 has been gutted and disassembled (mostly, the motherboard is mercifully left attached to the chassis), revealing the typical arrangement of tiny electronics, which includes Hynix memory chips and a SanDisk-branded SSD. We’re just glad to see that masking tape isn’t playing a structurally integral role in its construction. Things don’t really get much better for the slinky 48 once it gets back home to Google HQ, however, as its makers have put together an entire video composed of creative destruction methods for it. Cruel, cruel people.
Gallery: Google Cr-48 laptop torn down
Continue reading Google Cr-48 laptop torn down and destroyed in one unlucky day (video)
Google Cr-48 laptop torn down and destroyed in one unlucky day (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 02:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Yep, that Flash error up there is one of many we got today on our Cr-48s. On top of that, as you may have read in our in-depth preview, we’ve been experiencing incredibly sluggish Flash performance, including choppy playback of YouTube and Hulu videos. It’s certainly not a good situation, but Adobe’s aware of it and promising that hope is on the way. Adobe’s Senior Director of Engineer
Paul Betlem has put up a post regarding the matter on the company’s very own Flash Player blog, and says that ” In terms of Chrome notebooks specifically… video performance in particular is the primary area for improvement.” He also goes on to promise that the updates will be seamless as the Flash plug-ins are integrated directly into the self-updating operating system. That sure sounds good to us, but in the meantime, we’ll be waiting for these Flash errors and stuttering 480p videos to disappear — or, you know, for HTML 5 to take over.
Flash working poorly on your Google Cr-48? Adobe’s working on it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Dec 2010 19:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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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
Our pals over at PCMag were kind enough to give us a little bit of hands-on time with the Cr-48 Google Chrome notebook. I should note, right off the bat, that this is far from being a production unit. It’s more or less a dummy laptop, really, designed to show off the long-awaited Chrome OS.
No one’s really even sure who designed the thing, actually, but the word online is that it was created by Inventec, a Taiwanese company. Acer and Samsung have both signed on to release Chrome-based netbooks next year. The notebook’s screen is 12.1 inches. The system has both Wi-Fi and built-in 3G. The system ships with 100MB of free data from Verizon.
The Chrome Cr-48 netbook might just be a reference design—as in, most folks won’t ever be able to use it—but it is what Google thinks a Chrome laptop should be. And it has some pretty nice touches. Updated. More »
The Earthlings here at Engadget HQ are still patiently awaiting their own Cr-48s, but it looks as if those who were quick on the trigger have just received a Chrome OS laptop to cuddle with. If you’ll recall, Google opened up a Chrome OS Pilot Program Tuesday, and for those who registered early (and got awfully lucky), they’re being treated to a Cr-48 on their doorsteps. One gracious tipster has already sent over a trio of unboxing shots (while another provided the video after the break), and we’ll be sure to give the low-down (you know — video, impressions, etc.) once our own arrives. Anytime now, FedEx…
[Thanks, Dan and Michael]
Continue reading Google Cr-48 Chrome OS laptop now shipping to the lucky few
Google Cr-48 Chrome OS laptop now shipping to the lucky few originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Dec 2010 10:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google blew the lid off of Chrome OS yesterday in a big way, and one of its key features is now ready to roll. Cloud Print was unveiled back in April, a method to enable Google mobile devices to print via nebulous networking, and it’s now here — with some caveats. The biggest being that right now the only host for a non Cloud Print-compatible printer (basically all but this one) is a Windows PC running Chrome 9.0.597.1 or greater. Set up the service through there and the browser will host your good ‘ol printer to your Chrome OS device. Don’t have a Chrome OS device? You will. Eventually more printers will support this natively, eliminating the middleman, and we’re sure printing support will be coming to Android down the road too. When? In due time, fair reader. In due time.
Google Cloud Print is ready to spool in beta, if you have a Windows PC handy originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Dec 2010 16:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We gotta hand it to Google: if its goal was to own the technology news cycle for 48 hours, mission accomplished. The Mountain View-based company spent the first two days this week laying out pretty much every big announcement it possibly could: a new flagship phone coming next week (the Nexus S), a new Android build (2.3 Gingerbread), a preview of the next Android build (Honeycomb) on a never-before-seen Motorola tablet, the debut of its cloud-based laptop platform (Chrome OS) with hardware, and a giant plunge into the growing e-book market — and that isn’t everything. We’ve done our best to condense all the days’ highlights into something easier to digest, so read on for a recap on all things Google!
Google’s big week: Nexus S, Honeycomb tablets, Chrome OS laptops, and eBooks to boot originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google’s Chrome OS, announced Tuesday, comes along with a little something that makes us gadget-freaks pretty excited: the monolithic, plain-black Cr-48, an Atom netbook that will be shipped to selected developers and others as part of Google’s Chrome Pilot Program.
Just look at it. Normally Google’s wares are utilitarian but plain, if not plain ugly. THe Cr-48, though, is gorgeous, coming on more like a stealth-fighter than a low-powered laptop.
The matte-black box contains a 12-inch screen, weighs 3.8 pounds and sports a full-sized keyboard. It will give 8 hours of use on a single charge and Google says it will boot in ten seconds, or resume from sleep instantly. There’s a webcam, the trackpad looks like one of the giant pads found on Apple’s MacBooks, and the netbook ditches the hard drive for flash memory. After all, who needs a lot of storage in a cloud-based OS, especially when the machine packs a global 3G radio along with its Wi-Fi?
But best of all, Google has killed the Caps Lock key, the weapon of comment-trolls the world over. No longer will these idiots be able to SHOUT THEIR DUMB OPINIONS without holding down an extra key. And the rest of us will no longer have to retype a sentence after accidentally engaging this vestigial annoyance. The key that usually functions as Caps Lock is still there, but has been reassigned: Pressing it will bring up the netbook’s search function.
Google has also ditched the traditional row of function keys, replacing them with the media keys that most notebooks mix up with the function keys these days.
The unit itself is gorgeous. Over at our sister blog, Epicenter, you can find out about the new Chrome OS that it will run, as well as the Chrome Store, from my esteemed colleague Michael Calore. And if you want one of these hot machines? Bad luck, unless you get very, very lucky and are accepted for the pilot program.
With Chrome OS, Google Doubles Down on the Cloud [Epicenter]
Cr-48 Chrome Notebook [Google]
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