Google Chromebooks: The Chrome OS!!

The first laptops running on a Google-designed software system will go on sale in the US and six other countries next month.

The June 15 release date announced Wednesday means the lightweight laptops will hit the market nearly two years after Google Inc. began working on an operating system based on its Chrome Web browser.

Since then, Apple Inc.'s iPad and other tablet computers have become hot sellers. The growing popularity of tablets has raised questions about how interested consumers will be interested in buying Google-powered laptops specifically tailored for Web surfing.

Samsung Electronics Co. and Acer Inc. are making the first Chromebooks. They will sell for $349 to $499 at Best Buy and Amazon.com Inc. in the US. The cheapest IPad sells for $499.

Acer's Chromebook, at $349, will have an 11.6-inch screen display and up to six hours of battery life. Samsung's version, selling for $429 to $499, will have a 12.1-inch screen and up to 8.5 hours of battery life. Both models will have keyboards, but no hard drives for storage. The machines will be like computer terminals dependent on a connection to the Internet. The laptops come with 16 gigabytes of flash memory - the kind found in smartphones, tablet computers and some iPods. They have slots to plug in other storages device you buy separately.

The Chromebooks also will be sold in Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Spain.

In an effort to get people to use Chromebooks, Google is offering three-year subscription plans to businesses and schools similar to how the mobile phone industry subsidizes devices up front and make the money back over the life of a service contract. For a monthly cost of $28 per user in businesses and government agencies and $20 per user in schools, Google provides the laptop, tech support and a warranty for the duration. Google will replace the Chromebooks at the end of the three years.

Chromebook's long-awaited debut will intensify Google's competition with Microsoft Corp., whose Windows operating system remains the foundation of most personal computers.

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have long felt that Windows computers took too long to power up and were too clunky to operate. They believed that Windows' drawbacks were discouraging people from spending even more time online, where they could click on ads sold by Google.

To address the perceived problem, Google announced its plans in July 2009 for a Chrome-based operating system that would enable computers to turn on in a matter of seconds and encourage more Web surfing.

"The complexity of managing computers is really frustrating for users out there," Brin told reporters Wednesday at Google's conference for software developers. "It's a flawed model."

Brin, who began focusing on special projects earlier this year, said he didn't have enough information to comment on a Justice Department investigation into the online ad system that generates most of Google's revenue. The company disclosed Tuesday that it has set aside $500 million to settle the probe. It provided few details.

Besides attacking Microsoft's Windows franchise, Google's Chromebook also will represent another challenge to Apple, which makes Mac computers as well as iPads. Google and Apple have been engaged in a fierce competition in the smartphone market for the past two years.

Google itself has joined the tablet computer craze by creating a special version of its Android software for mobile devices. Apple sold nearly 20 million iPads during the tablet's first year on the market. and analysts expect people to buy tens of millions more tablets from Apple and other manufacturers during the next few years.

Google Chrome Third Beta Version Goes Faster!!!

Google has unleashed a brand new beta edition of its Google Chrome web browser, promising a speed hike of over 30 percent improvement on both the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks over our current stable channel release.

The supercharged performance isn’t the only reason to grab the new beta: the Google Chrome blog also promises improvements to the New Tab page and Omnibox. For instance, the New Tab page now allows you to move websites in and out of your Most Visited slot by clicking and dragging.

Customize the new New Tab page

The New Tab page has been one of the most popular features in Google Chrome. It's also the one that we hear the most about. Embarrassed that checking out lolcats is showing up as your most popular browser pastime? Now you can bump up something dignified and refined into that top Most Visited slot with a simple click and drag of your mouse. You can pin website thumbnails to a particular spot so they don't disappear even if your browsing habits change. Last but not least, you can hide parts of the page if you don't want to see them using the layout buttons on the top right of the New Tab page.

The Omnibox (which combines URL entry, search and more) now has a better drop-down menu, with new icons added to distinguish between searches, bookmarks, sites from your browsing history and suggested sites.

The Omnibox is indisputably an important part of Google Chrome -- it helps you get to the sites you're looking for with just a few keystrokes. With this release, Google has optimized the presentation of the drop-down menu and added little icons to help you distinguish between suggested sites, searches, bookmarks, and sites from your browsing history.

Lastly, Google Chrome now has themes, allowing you to customise the browser’s look.Now you can pick a wonderful theme from the google galary and dress up your browser to match your mood and taste.

If you want to try it out yourself head over to the Google Chrome beta download page. It’s currently only available for machines running Windows Vista or XP SP2+.

Google Chrome OS: 10 ways it will change netbooks!!

Google took the fight straight to Microsoft’s door earlier this week when it announced Chrome OS, its take on what a modern operating system should look like. The initial target is netbooks, so here are ten things that a bit of Google magic could bring to the little laptop market.

1. Less is more important

Chrome OS is lightweight, making it fast to run even on modest hardware. All the heavy lifting has been offloaded to Google’s central servers so you don’t need to lug round a portable powerhouse to make the most of it.

2. Instant on

Windows takes an age to boot - fine if you’re going to be stuck in there for the next eight hours, but if you just want to quickly check your email it’s frustratingly tardy. Chrome OS will be instant on, so you can be in and out before Windows has even had time to ask you if you want to download the latest security updates.

3. Superior security

Windows is always spring security leaks. Google has pledged to make Chrome extra safe by: “completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.” Let's hope for a safer future.

4. Gamers go home

Chrome OS puts everything on the web, which means 3D shooters are a no go. But it does means there’s no need for fancy graphics chips, which will help keep costs down.

5. Online storage

You no longer need oodles of storage on board as Chrome OS will store your files in the cloud. As an added bonus, they’ll be accessible anywhere you’ve got the Internet. Need to re-look at the speed of accessing a file online....

6. Better battery life

As the hardware specs are minimal and it’s been designed with netbooks in mind, the batteries should just keep on going. And going. And going.

7. Two’s a charm

There’ll be the option to dual boot Chrome OS and Windows, so you can jump into Chrome OS when you want to quickly get thing done or have an extended Windows session if you need applications that only run in there.

8. Face lift

Netbooks are not known for their big screens, which makes Chrome OS’s cut down user interface a bonus. Less onscreen clutter, more pixels to work with.

9. Not ARM less

As well as standard Intel x86 chips, Google is planning a version that runs on super power efficient ARM chips which opens up the market to cheap netbooks with extra long of battery life. affordable netbooks for everyone!

10. Low, low price of free

With Windows a certain percentage of the netbook price gets funnelled straight back to Microsoft’s coffers. Chrome OS is free, which means more of your money is going on hardware.

Once the Chrome hits its users, the OS will be much cheaper to compete with the Chrome. As a result you gonna get a cheaper computer!!!

Google to Enter OS War...

In what is certain to be the biggest tech story of the summer, Google is finally making official what has been rumored for years: It will create its own computer operating system, Chrome OS, slated for release in late 2010.

While the news is stunning in its potential impact on the industry, it hardly arrives without warning. Google already makes its own cell phone OS, the fledgling Android, which continues to slowly gain devotees. And well before the company unleashed its own web browser, Chrome, many had long since assumed that Google had been preparing to release an operating system. When the Chrome browser was released instead, many observers actually saw it as a bit of a letdown in the news department.

Now it's clear what Google has been up to all along: Chrome is simply the centerpiece of a larger table setting, a full-blown operating system that will run without Windows or the MacOS beneath it.

Google is keeping many details close to the vest -- and, with at least a year before the OS comes out, it really has no choice since the OS has miles to go before it's ready -- but the company has made a few details public. Chrome OS will be open source, like Linux operating systems, upon which Chrome will be based; it will be designed to be "fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds;" and it will be designed with security in mind (though, seriously, everybody says that). The OS will run on both ARM and x86 CPUs, the latter being the most common PC chip architecture on the planet, used on virtually every PC produced today.

Despite the hints about Chrome OS, many, many questions remain. Obviously Chrome is designed with the web in mind, and it will undoubtedly be closely tied into Google's extensive suite of services. But what will its offline components look like, if any? With Linux as a base, it will obviously be able to run Linux-based applications, though it won't be compatible with Windows... or will it? Emulator systems exist that could let Chrome run Windows apps, but they're complex and at odds with the goal of creating a streamlined, super-simple operating system. I am immediately curious as to how big of a hard drive a Chrome OS laptop would have, if it will have one at all.

Another big question involves the hardware this operating system will run on. Google obviously has inexpensive, low-power netbooks in mind for Chrome OS, but will tinkerers be able to install it on computers they already own? Driver issues become a major obstacle at that point, as a "simple" OS can't possibly account for the thousands of hardware variations present in modern PCs (printing alone is going to be a headache as it is). My hunch is that a downloadable version will eventually be available, but that it won't be supported by Google at all should you decide to install it on a non-approved PC.

That leads to the question of whether Google is ignoring a key part of the market. Netbooks are great little toys, but they're hardly the tools of choice for those looking to get real work done. By embracing the web and largely ignoring offline applications, Chrome-based netbooks will by necessity remain tools for the low end of the market, playthings for when you're not really being productive. Like the Linux-based netbooks before them, they just won't do enough for many users.

And that's an ominous issue hanging out there for Chrome OS's future. Linux-based netbooks haven't been a rousing success, as Windows fought back with a vengeance after they hit the market, offering buyers a more familiar working environment and compatibility with their other computers while keeping prices down. Consumers have so far warmed up to the idea of having more features on their netbooks, not fewer, relegating Linux on netbooks to the background. Will a spiffy, Googleized version of Linux change consumer opinion? Maybe, but probably not dramatically.

Contrary to public opinion, everything that Google touches does not turn to gold, and to be frank, Google has a serious uphill battle ahead for its OS ambitions. I'm cautiously optimistic that Google will put something brilliant together here, and can't wait to get my eyes on the software, but the challenges it faces are extreme. Put together something too unique and different and consumers may be put off and confused. Or you could make an OS that clings closely to the Windows interface, but what would be the point of that?

What will Google's Chrome OS be like?

So Google has launched a major salvo in its ongoing war against Microsoft. But what will the new Chrome Operating System look like?

The initial details suggest that the structure of the operating system will be Google Chrome (the browser) running "within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel." That's the words of the Google blog, which also announced the new OS will work on both x86 and, interestingly, ARM processors, too.

That last point is an interesting one, as it gives netbook manufacturers the option of a different processor architecture as well as raising further questions about Android - could the Chrome OS run on smartphones? Surely the answer to the latter point is that it won't, officially at least.

Indeed, the whole experience of Chrome OS is designed to take place online using Google Gears-like online/offline web app technology."The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web," explains Google's Sundar Pichai who was also keen to talk about security, often a sticking point.

"And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work."

Challenges for developers?

You might think it would also raise challenges for software developers, who will have to recode for a new OS. And yes, in the traditional model of software, this would have been an interesting challenge for Google. Software developers would traditionally only develop for something that will make them money.

But Google says that new applications can be written using standard web technologies - and this ease of adaptation is bad news for Microsoft. Existing web apps will already work, while newly developed apps will equally be able to be used in standards compliant browsers on Windows, Mac and Linux machines.

Google may have a problem challenging consumer expectations of what an operating system should be like - most people expect software to work in the traditional way. In other words, they expect it to be offline, rather than apps that work on the web and consider "the web is the platform". Chrome OS will challenge this.

Speed and simplicity

However, it is clear that Google wants Chrome OS to be driven by speed and simplicity. "We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear - computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up, they want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them," explains Pichai.

And Pichai might as well have been specific in saying that Chrome OS can easily be location unspecific, sharing documents, apps and user profiles over the web. "[Users] want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files."

"Even more importantly," continues Pichai, "they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the internet."

Google says it will need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish the vision of the Chrome OS. It will be releasing the code later in 2009 so it'll be interesting to see it in action later this year, even if it won't be available commercially on networks until late 2010.

Google Chrome OS: New Way of Computing???

It's been an exciting nine months since google launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. Google designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, Google announced a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's Google's attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year google will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because google is already talking to partners about the project, and google will soon be working with the open source community, Google wanted to share thier vision now so everyone understands what they are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. Google is designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, google is going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and google is working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, Google believes choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

Google hear a lot from their users and the message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time the users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

Google has a lot of work to do, and google is definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. google and it's users are excited for what's to come and me too.