[Cialug] OMG CR-48 Netbook

[Todd Walton]

OMG as in "Oh My Google!"  I signed up to beta test Google's Chrome OS
netbook a few weeks ago.  I told them how cool I was, and apparently
they bought it because 10 minutes after I got home last night the UPS
man knocked on the door and gave me an unmarked brown box.  Inside was
a sweet little netbook from Google!  I did the Little Miss Sunshine
screech for about a minute, I was so excited.

There were absolutely no markings on the box, the box inside the box,
or even on the computer itself.  But when I first opened it it turned
on and went straight to a first-time set up screen.  The set up and
instructions have the usual Google funny/lighthearted-ness to them.
It doesn't completely turn off, it goes to a standby mode.  I don't
know if it's suspend-to-disk or if it's in really really low power
mode.  You turn the thing on by opening the lid.  Once you open the
lid, it's on and sitting at the home screen in about a second and a
half, two seconds.  It normally leaves you signed in, but you can sign
out, and there's a guest mode if you wanna lend it to someone else.
Chrome OS is just like Chrome the web browser, except instead of
bookmark type boxes on the new tab window, it has "apps".  Otherwise,
it's just like living your entire desktop experience inside a browser.
 There's no Applications menu.  There's a clock, a network connection
icon, and a battery indicator at the far right end of the tab bar.

It has a built in wireless card and a built in cellular card.  It
comes with a Verizon Wireless plan of 100MB per month for two years,
free.  I don't have to return the laptop, it's mine.  They don't even
require you to submit feedback.  In the setup process it said
something like 'if you don't mind, kick the tires, kick all the tires,
and if you find a bug hit the bug feedback button'.  I've submitted
one bug (very minor and temporary, what Ubuntu would call a "paper
cut") and it basically just opens a new tab and has a simple form to
fill out.  Select category, fill in the text box, hit submit and move
on.

The touchpad is a little funny.  It's one big rectangle touchpad in
the usual place.  You drag to move the pointer, tap to click,
two-fingertip drag to scroll, two-fingertip tap to right click.  I've
mis-tapped several times now, but I think I'll get used to it.  It's
not as bad as some laptops I've seen.  Also, no caps lock key.  Where
caps lock would be there's a "new tab" button.  But you can configure
that button to be a caps lock if you really want it to be.

I've always been a bit old school in my computing preferences, for
values of old school equal to late 80s, early 90s.  But I think I want
to start trying to keep stuff online "in the cloud" where I can.  Too
many times I've wanted to reference an email and I don't have IMAP
setup on my personal email account.  And I've been using Google Docs
for a limited number of documents that I have to share with people,
and I'm really liking it.  I might put more there.  Etc.

That's what I told them when I signed up to beta test.  And also that
I run the Des Moines Objectivism Group.  I was hoping that would count
for "he'll tell others about it".

--
Todd