Chrome OS: Hopes & Fears
Sharing hopes and fears; we’ve been doing this since Google’s vague Chrome OS announcement came out. Why? Because there’s so little we actually know, we’ve all resorted to conjecture. So while we hope for more info soon, here is a summary of hopes and fears…
We hope it will disturb the OS market and generate innovation. We fear it will be just another variant of Linux.
We hope it will be a quick booting platform. We fear few people will care because Windows 7 and OSX wake from standby in a matter of seconds.
We hope enough useful applications will be available. We fear the emphasis will be so browser/online-focused that the application base will be severely limited.
We hope mobile broadband prices will fall to support mobile online usage of the apps. We fear that the status quo will remain and we’ll be relying on Gears.
We hope it will have a more consistent interface than Android. We fear Google’s minimalist design history will lead to a functional, minimalist but unexciting front end.
We hope device drivers will be readily available. We fear that it took so long for Mac drivers to appear for some devices that the wait for Chrome OS drivers may literally drive some people away.
We hope netbook consumers will be interested in it. We fear they won’t; MSI has seen four Linux netbook returns for each Windows return. Why should the Chrome variant be any different?
We hope other Linux distros will survive. We fear Google was aiming for Microsoft and will hit the Linux community instead.
Neil Berman
Adamo price cut, still way too expensive
One of the most bizarrely priced computers of recent times has finally had a price cut…sort of.
Dell’s bottom of the range not-as-expensive-as-the-most-expensive Adamo, which packs a meager 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo and onboard Intel graphics is now a bargain still very expensive $1,499. Yes that’s exactly the same price as a 1.86GHz MacBook Air with its Nvidia 9400 chipset.
The most expensive model of the expensive Adamo family is still the same very expensive price. In fact it’s way too expensive for me to quote seriously here.
I still haven’t seen an Adamo in outside of CES and I have a feeling I won’t for a while yet.
Neil Berman
Dreams Of Oceania Come Scarily True: Amazon Dives Into Kindles
I had a dream. In my dream someone entered my apartment when I wasn’t there.
I wouldn’t have even known but they left a note to say they were sent by a bookshop. Apparently a book I’d bought was no longer eligible for sale. So, and this is where it gets really funky-dream-weird, the bookshop was visiting everyone who had bought the book and taking it back. They weren’t knocking, they were just going to each buyer’s address, finding a way in and taking the book back. They were even leaving checks on the table!!
In fact it was all bizarrely similar to what Amazon did when it deleted MobileReference-published Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four and Animal Farm from buyers’ Kindles and refunded their account, saying the title was no longer available for purchase. It turns out that the publisher did not have the rights to sell the titles.
However this really begs the question, “Do you own a Kindle?” I mean do you really own a Kindle? Does it have a lock and who has the keys?
Neil Berman
Space cakes? Give me donuts.
I don’t know what kind of funky math Sprint used to figure out how much that cool Dunkin Donuts in Space would cost, but what a great ad!!
I mean that really makes me stop and think about how much it costs to run an iPhone. Isn’t it amazing what we could do if those three million people all got together? Mmmmm all those Boston Cremes. Having said that, they’d have a heck of a time keeping those Space Donuts fresh.
Neil Berman
Netbooks rock, but are Nettops worth it?
Whilst we are eternally grateful to Asus for the original EEE PC and the Netbook offspring it spawned, why do OEMs continue to think it’s OK to package an Intel Atom with GMA950 graphics in a home PC?
Apart from the potential electricity savings why would a sane person ever say, “I’d sure like to have an underpowered home PC which will struggle to play YouTube vids”. And given how much longer this PC would have to be powered-on to complete tasks which an Intel CULV chip could complete in a fraction of the time, are there really power savings there at all?
I actually reckon a CULV powered PC could be more power efficient than an Atom based machine for home media usage. But of course the Atom platform is cheap to build and the Nettop buzzword adds margin…and that’s the crux of this one.
Netbooks are great. Nettops? Fit them with CULV processors. I’d rather pay a little extra for a LOT extra.
Neil Berman
Hot Apple Pie
What is it about Apple products that makes them such hot property? Engineering? Design? Components? I guess all of those had a part to play in the iPhone discoloration, alleged iPod burning (two links) and MacBook ‘oven’ stories.
I love a bit of hot apple pie on a summer camping trip, but this just isn’t the type of home-cooking I remember from my childhood.
Enjoying songs around the campfire is all well and good, having the campfire being the one singing the songs is not so hot.
Neil Berman
theONbutton
Turning the world on, one gadget at a time.
