I have been a pilot tester of Google Chrome OS using the Cr-48 notebook that Google provided me six months ago in December 2010. Yesterday, at the second day of the 2-day Google IO 2011 conference in
Now that an official name has been dubbed for this new class of device, I can start using the word ‘Chromebook’ to refer to my prototype Cr-48. To gain an understanding of what a Chromebook is, watch this short video on YouTube Introducing the Chromebook
that concisely describes it or read the information available at the Chromebook site and the various short videos describing its features. On the Chromebook site there are several short videos that describe the main features. I provided links to these videos here for your convenience:
- Instant Web
- Always Connected
- Same Experience Everywhere
- Amazing Web Apps
- Forever Fresh
- Security Built-in
I have been my Cr-48 on a daily basis and it just simply works for everything I do in the cloud. New features that Google has been internally testing for the past few months (Coming this summer) will be the ability to work offline in Gmail, Calendar, Google Docs, and various other cloud tools that leverage HTML5 including the recently announced Google Music Beta which is essentially cloud-based music service that is very similar to Amazon Cloud Player.
For Business and Education users, Google has established a new business model where it is providing a lease for a very low-cost monthly subscription (approx $20 for education, $28 for businesses) that includes the hardware. See this video for more information, Chromebook – Business and Education Overview. The details on this plan are not yet available but I am curious if they will also provide a low cost personal pay-as-you-go plan which would really be nice.
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