Hasta La Gadget!

Google just demoed Chrome OS running on a piece of reference hardware at its event in SF. It just takes four steps and less than a minute to set up a brand-new Chrome OS machine — it pulls all your Chrome themes and settings from the cloud, so it’s ready to go almost right away, and changes can propagate in less than a second in some cases. The reference machine demoed was able to come back up from sleep almost instantly — Google says the limiting factor is actually how fast the user can move their hand. (It wasn’t that fast in the demo, but it was still really fast.) The OS also supports multiple accounts with a guest account that runs in Incognito mode by default, and everything is wiped on logout. All user data is encrypted by default, and the OS itself is loaded on read-only memory that can’t be altered without physical access — a tech which enables verified booting, but also seems to mean you won’t be able to root a Chrome OS machine.

There’s also offline capability — Google Docs was demoed running offline, with changes synced when the machine reconnects. It seems like that’s an app-specific feature though — apps on the Chrome Web Store have to be built for HTML5 offline to work, obviously. Google also demoed Google Cloud Print, which allows you to print on your home printer from anywhere. Chrome OS devices will also be able to use new Verizon 3G plans for offline access — you’ll get 100MB of free data per month for two years, and then plans start at $9.99 for a day of “unlimited access” with no contracts required. (There will eventually be international options, but those weren’t detailed.)

Developing…

Google Chrome OS gets detailed originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 14:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments