Google to release own-brand Chrome OS netbook
Acer, HP too
Expect to see the appearance of netbooks running Google's Chrome OS later this month, the first of them coming from the online advertising giant itself.
Acer and HP will have similar machines out in December.
So say moles from within Taiwan's electronics industry by way of local newssite DigiTimes.
The machines come more than a year after industry players began talking up "smartbooks" - netbooks with ARM processors rather than Intel chippery. These deviced fall into that category, and may prove more successful than the few smartbooks that have made it out the door in the intervening time.
The arrival of the iPad has done for a number of promised smartbooks. Of those that have been released, the Toshiba AC100 is probably the best known, though its combination of tasty hardware with an inappropriate OS - Android, since you ask - has considerably reduced its utility.
You can read more later this week when Reg Hardware runs its review of the AC100.
Chrome should be far more suited to keyboard- and mouse-operated devices than the touchscreen-centric Android, so the smartbook may now finally be able to shine.
Or punters may still want tablets instead. Acer, HP, Google and co. seem uncertain - the moles imply the initial launches will be very much market testers. ®
COMMENTS
I'm torn...
It's nice to see an open, Unix based O/S on a consumer device, but this is uber-evil Google, the scourge of street mapping and WiFi SID collection, we're talking about here, would we really trust them with our porn colle...erm, personal data on a laptop?
Decisions, decisions.
urm...iPad powerful apps?
Seriously?
I cannot think of a powerful anything on the iPad. Please provide a list.
Did I come across like a fanboy?
I must have I guess. I do agree that there are significant concerns around data privacy with anything Google touches.
Maybe to try and explain a little better this time, it's the combination of OS architecture and smartbook-grade hardware that I like. I can completely say with a straight face that in my house, despite having full Win7 *and* Office, our netbook hasn't launched a local app other than the browser and PDF reader in the last month, easily. We don't use it for anything else. The other 3 machines in the house? Different story, no doubt.
I would love to see a Google-less equivalent to ChromeOS (i.e. a stateless, secure, lightweight and fast OS architecture built around the browser on commodity-grade hardware). It's no replacement for my desktop/laptop... and the Google-controlled version wouldn't fly in business setting IMO (and yours I take it), but I still like *the idea* sans Google.
Cheers!
Not open
It may be Unix-based but it is not open, it's just a device with the Google browser soldered in. If you want to do anything with it apart from clicking on ads you have to use Google cloudiness... This is the classic definition of a Trojan, you get something that it's not what it looks and then somebody gets to control all your personal data. You prove my point nicely. Go for it my boy!
Doh
Didn't Microsoft admit that having two 'mobile' OSes was a bad thing? they had two versions of Windows Mobile, smartphone and PocketPC (touch screen).
I really don't understand the point of Chrome OS. It just looks like an OS that is designed for an Internet appliance, not a computer.
People want to run applications on a tablet, not just a browser. Sure, the Internet features are very important. But look at the iPad, there are some pretty powerful apps for it that simple can't be delivered via a browser.
