Web Developers

Chrome OS Release Candidates In Testing

Posted by on Oct 11, 2010 | 2 Comments

There should be an image here!Chrome is not just a browser any longer. Soon, it’s going to be known as an OS in addition to its browsing roots. Now the test images for Chrome OS have been available for sometime now. But now we are seeing indications that Google is nearing their point of being ready to release a viable candidate for the casual user.

The issues to be found thus far, basically come down to the following: it is not using any of the big desktop environments like KDE or GNOME, the OS is useless without an Internet connection, everything seems to be based on web applications. Honestly, this could be a huge success or a gigantic blunder for Google, depending on how you happen to look at it.

I remain very skeptical about Chrome OS as I feel it has failings attached to its reliance on broadband Internet or at least reliable dialup. Either way, it’s pretty risky. The fall back for Google is that they will be launching this on netbooks, thus hoping to soften the blow by falling back to Android if need be. That is my speculation on the issue, I may be completely wrong here.

  • http://www.justenrobertson.com Justen Robertson

    I share your skepticism. They may be on to something here, but it’s definitely not up my alley. While I’m a big fan of netbooks, web apps, and even have a MiFi 3g router I pack around, I still can’t imagine having much use for an environment that does not allow me to run native software. It just doesn’t seem very “hackable”. Jolicloud is a great take on a similar idea that gives you the best of both worlds. I’ve been running it for a while on a netbook and am very happy with it.

  • MikeFM

    This is the way the future is going to go but who knows if Chrome OS is going to hit the sweet spot. I’d guess probably not right from the start. Most desktop apps are horrible so we’re not giving up much and web-based apps are quickly improving especially if you don’t have to deal with IE. I think they may be jumping the gun though as we need better protocols and languages for building such apps before we can really make e switch. Itneeds to be easy to download and cache application logic and data to the user’s computer where possible and standard ways to make servers run bits of apps to intense for local devices, store users data in a secure way, etc. Just slapping a web browser into the desktop environments spot has been done and isn’t enough.