Hasta La Gadget!

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — Google today unveiled more details of Chrome OS, a lightweight, browser-based operating system for netbooks.

With a strong focus on speed, the Chrome OS promises nearly instant boot times of about 7 seconds for users to login to their computers.

“We want Google Chrome OS to be blazingly fast … to boot up like a TV,” said Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management for Google.

The first Chrome OS netbooks will be available in late 2010, Pichai said. It will not be available as a download to run and install. Instead, Chrome OS is only shipping on specific hardware from manufacturers Google has partnered with. That means if you want Chrome OS, you’ll have to purchase a Chrome OS device.

Google is currently working with unnamed computer manufacturers to define specifications for these computers, which Pichai said will include larger netbook-style computers with full-size keyboards, large trackpads and large displays.

Chrome OS netbooks will not have traditional hard disk drives — they will rely on non-volatile flash memory and internet-based storage for saving all of your data.

All the applications will be web-based, meaning users won’t have to install apps, manage updates or even backup their data. All data will be stored in the cloud, and users won’t even have to bother with anti-virus software: Google claims it will monitor code to prevent malicious activity in Chrome OS web apps.

“Chrome OS is a totally rethought computer that will let you focus on the internet, so you can stop worrying about your computer,” according to a Google promotional video shown at the event, held at the Google campus in Mountain View, California.

As part of its announcement today, Pichai said that Google would be releasing all of the operating system’s code and design documents to the public.

Introduced in July, Chrome OS is a Linux-based, open-source operating system centered on Google’s Chrome browser. Applications will run exclusively inside the browser, Google said Thursday.

“As of today, the code will be fully open, which means Google developers will be working on the same tree as open developers,” said Pichai.

The OS’s focus on design is consistent with the company’s stance that the future is in the web. In July, Vic Gundotra, Google’s engineering vice president and developer evangelist, spoke on a panel about app stores, in which he said native apps (such as those available for the iPhone) would be obsolete in the future, and that the web will “become the platform that matters.”

“Every capability you want today, in the future it will be written as a web application,” Pichai said Thursday.

Netbooks — lightweight, low-powered subnotebooks — were the surprise hit of 2008 and 2009. However, with the growth of netbook sales slowing — and the prices of some full-powered notebooks dropping below $400 — the continued viability of the netbook sector is an open question.

Though netbook shipments are falling below manufacturers’ expectations, the inexpensive, low-powered devices appear to still be selling well. Pichai cited research figures from ABI research indicating that 35 million netbooks shipped in 2009, more than twice the number sold in 2008.

Manufacturers have yet to announce pricing on netbooks shipping with Chrome OS, but Google expects the cost to be about the same as current netbooks. On average, netbooks cost between $300 and $500.

Videos demonstrating Chrome OS’s user interface, security, fast boot and other features are below the jump.

See Also:

• Five Things Google’s Chrome OS Will Do for Your Netbook
• Google Announces PC Operating System to Compete with Windows …
• You Predict the Winner of OS Wars: Chrome, Windows, Linux, OS X …
• Google FAQ Reveals Chrome OS Hardware Partners

Photo illustration: Charlie Sorrel/Wired.com; Original photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The prospects of a Future Inevitable Internet Collapse[TM] has some of our readers seriously freaked out. You know the type — they live in places like Idaho and Montana, in fortified mountaintop retreats, where they hoard digital media like it was canned food in December 1999. And concerns over bandwidth aren’t limited to a lunatic fringe — no less august a publication than IEEE Spectrum has recently posted an article by Lawrence G. Roberts (who pretty much helped invent the modern router) in which he discusses the state of the Internet. According to Roberts, our current routers are still designed to handle much smaller amounts of data than they are currently pushing. Streaming data only works at all, he says, due to extreme over-provisioning — “Network operators,” he says, are throwing “bandwidth at a problem that really requires a computing solution.”

One possible solution is something called “flow management.” Instead of routing each packet individually, a flow router attaches an ID to each packet in a specific stream (“flow”). After the first packet is routed, each subsequent packet with the same ID is sent along the same route — cutting down on time and on the amount of lost packets. Roberts’ company, Anagran, has one such device on the market now — the FR-1000, which he says consumes one fifth the power of a comparable (traditional) router, one tenth the space, and should reduce operating costs in GB/s by a factor of ten. And this, dear readers, may be the key to the survival of the Internet — that is, until the robots get us.

Filed under: Networking

New ‘flow router’ may save the Internet from collapsing under the weight of all your v-blog posts originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lexmark has announced a new line of web-connected touchscreen printers targeted at small and medium businesses. The inkjet printers will have a 4.3-inch touchscreen, can copy, fax, scan and directly connect to RSS feeds or download weather information from the internet.

The new printers come on the heels of a similar product launched by HP last month. HP’s Photosmart Premium web-connected printer allows customers to print movie tickets from Fandango, content from USA Today, Google maps and upload photos directly to a Snapfish account.

Lexmark’s new printers will have a graphical interface with icons for basic functions, says the company. It will also allow buyers to customize their workflows on the printer and create shortcuts for activities such as group faxing and scan to email templates.

The printers will have wireless capability and a business card scan mode that will allow contact information to be automatically uploaded to Microsoft Outlook, Windows CE or Palm OSTM.

Lexmark’s web-connected printers will be priced from $200 to $400 and will be available starting September.

Photo: Lexmark touchscreen printer/Lexmark

Okay, so first things first — we all know the world’s on track to end in 2012, so it’s not like this really matters. But if, just if it manages to survive (à la Y2K), you can pretty much bank on a mass reversal of culture as we all push aside our netbooks and return to the playground. According to some “research” slated to be fully published “later this year,” PCs and laptops are apt to “operate at a much reduced speed, rendering the internet an unreliable toy” from 2012 onward. The reason? Massive growth in internet demand, which is undoubtedly on pace to crush existing infrastructure that can’t ever be improved upon by anyone, regardless of their market capitalization or determination to expand. It’s noted that the internet itself will somehow survive, but that users will begin to see “brownouts,” which are described as “a combination of temporary freezing and computers being reduced to a slow speed.” Thank heavens for FinallyFast, right?

Psst… the solution to all of this is just past the break.

[Thanks, Colin]

Continue reading Doomsday alert: internet to become an “unreliable toy” in 2012

Filed under: Networking

Doomsday alert: internet to become an “unreliable toy” in 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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