Here’s a report from a user that’s been testing out Chrome OS for a while now. He’s built his own Chromebook via the Hexxeh builds and has been kind enough to put some thoughts down for us. See the video below too for demos of boot-up, Angry Birds, Touchpad usage, Tweetdeck, YouTube, media playback and more. Many thanks to Lars (@faaborgs) for sending this in. You can read more from Lars at his own blog and watch more from him at his YouTube channel.
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When the latest version of Chrome OS was announced back in May I figured that I should try it out. Looking around I found that Hexxeh [Link: http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/] was still compiling versions of Chrome OS every night so I grabbed the latest and went to work on installing it.
To make sure that Chrome OS had the very worst conditions to work under I dusted off my 3 year old Acer Aspire One A110. It’s an Atom based, 512 MB RAM, 8 GB SSD, 8.9” netbook, and I figured if Chrome OS could run on that It would run on almost anything.
Installation was straight forward and connecting to Wi-Fi and Google was done at first boot. After that you are left with a almost blank browser screen. So off I went to the Chrome Web Store [Link:https://chrome.google.com/webstore] to find what I needed. I just had to try out Angry Birds, that’s just something you have to do when ever you test something new. It started up fine, but game play is laggy and quickly takes the fun out of playing. That done I picked up TweetDeck. I have used it a lot on my mobile and my tablet, and I knew that there was a version made especially for Chrome. After install you launch it from the New Tab screen, and in contrast to most of the others apps in the Chrome Web Store, TweetDeck seems to actually run locally. I was hoping that made it work in offline mode, but I should not be so lucky. I’ll get back to that in a moment.
If you are already using the Google eco-system you will get comfortable with Chrome OS very quickly. All the services are there. Gmail, Docs, Blogger, Calendar, Reader and so on. In the Chrome Web Store there are links to almost every larger web services around, so you should not miss out on a lot. There are even drawing, photo editing and video editing apps in the store.
The one thing that is really missing is known games. Don’t get me wrong there are lots of games, but all the ones you know and love from your smart phone and PC are not there. As you look around in the Chrome Web Store you find that Google put a lot of time in making the visit interesting from day one. There is lots of apps and there should be something there for everybody.
With Chrome OS Google introduces a couple of new ways to navigate the browser. Scrolling up and down is done by using two fingers on the touchpad. Right clicking is done by taping the touchpad with two fingers, and finally, you can drag and drop by placing one finger on the touchpad and then dragging another finger over the pad. This all helps make the use of Chrome OS similar to what you would know from a tablet or smart phone. The overall speed of the system is good; even web pages that use Flash loads fairly fast and work without any problems. Playing embedded Flash video also works just like one would expect.
On my old Aspire One I do find that scrolling down a long web page with a lot of Flash can be a bit of a struggle. The page freezes up once in a while, but only for a second or two. Chrome OS is very good on the battery. On the 3 year old 2200mAh 3 cells battery I get almost 2 and a half hour of usage. Standby is also really great. I have not tried, but tests indicate that it would hold for around 75 hours on my Aspire One.
As I mentioned earlier I have not been able to get Chrome OS to work well in offline mode. You can boot up the OS and access settings and use the file manager to play media stored on the unit, but trying to start up any app without access to the Internet will not work. The Aspire One does not have 3G built-in and Chrome OS did not recognize the 3G USB dongle I tried so all I had was Wi-Fi. So does that doom Chrome OS upfront? I really do not think so. Chrome OS is a way to get accesses to almost all of the stuff you do on the Internet, from a small compact form factor.
Chrome OS is not for the mobile warrior, its a lot more for casual use on the couch. That puts it right in the middle of the tablet war waging right now. Its not a pretty place to be, but with the right price tag and the fact that you get a real PC with a keyboard I think it might just have a chance.
There is still a lot of work to be done before Chrome OS is for everyone. The media player needs to support more video codecs and offline mode have to work, at least on apps like Gmail, Calendar and Docs. The settings page and the file manager need to be made a lot more user friendly and finally someone needs to build a cheaper piece of hardware for Chrome OS to run on. The models Samsung and Acer have out there right now a way too expensive for the value Chrome OS brings.
Video demonstration: Chrome OS on Acer Aspire A110
Editorial note from Chippy:
It’s clear to me that the Web is a CPU-intensive place and that Google chose an Intel platform for Chromebooks in order to be able to deliver the Web at an acceptable speed. With SSD needed to keep cache and offline processes fast I don’t see many ways that a good quality Chromebook could be brought below, say, $250. Is that low enough to stimulate acceptability from a wider market or are Google content with aiming at specific use cases for the time being?
Thanks again for the review Lars.
