Google Chrome Cr-48 notebook first look

This thing has no Caps Lock key, to illustrate. So then, people shout too much on message boards, definitely. Instead, "that key above the left-side shift key" is marked with a "Search" icon. Tapping it opens up a new browser tab containing all of your webapps. It's akin to accessing the Home screen on your smartphone.

The Home screen underscores the natural

The Home screen underscores the "natural and familiar" vibe of the whole experience. I have to keep reminding myself of the OS' fundamental concept: a Chrome OS notebook is thoroughly zero-percent different from any Windows, Mac OS, or Linux notebook running Google Chrome in fullscreen mode. If I were to go home to my desktop and opened my personalized Google page in Chrome, I'd be seeing specifically what's in front of me right nevertheless. That's part of the point: to decentralize your computing experience and make your physical device irrelevant to the world you've built in the cloud.

So that's one fear dispelled. The other big one: "what do I do with this thing if I don't have Internet access?"

The answer to that one

I think I have the answer to that one: nothing. Entirely nothing. Previously sitting down here at Panera Bread, I was across the street at the Chipotle, attempting to connect to the Internet via my mobile hotspot device. I couldn't get it to work. The horror: there I was with a chicken burrito in front of me that needed to be eaten and with a desire to read comics strips and gossip blogs while lunch or anyway write a few hundred words about Chrome OS. Now without a connection to the Internet, this cutting-edge machine had become little more than a Notebook-Shaped Object. The six or seven open browser tabs in front of me were just ghosts of webapps that joined the choir invisible as shortly as they lost contact with their servers.

If Chrome catches on, we're truly going to see a bunch of webapps that can elegantly shift to a useful offline mode. Failing that, a Chrome OS notebook user is by all means going have to rely heavily on its built-in 3G connection to the Verizon mobile network. The Cr-48 comes with 100 megs of free connectivity a month however I didn't turn it on; it's free, yet you nevertheless need to plug in a credit-card number.