Hands on with Google Chrome OS

• It’s true: Like a lot of people, I nevertheless spend the vast majority of my computing time online and in the cloud.

Lot of people

• Nevertheless like a lot of people, I don’t do all of my computing there. And the things I don’t do within the cloud turn out to be critical to the way I live and work.

If you’re already a fan of the fast and intuitive Chrome browser, you’ll enjoy surfing the Web on this computer. If you like to rotate browsers for different purposes—between Safari and Firefox, say—at that time you’re out of luck.

The launch of Chrome OS

With the launch of Chrome OS, Google as well announced the opening of the Chrome Web Store, where users can download apps to expand their computing experience beyond mere browsing. Beyond a few extensions for the browser, but, many of the "apps" are merely bookmarks for Web pages—some optimized to work only with Chrome, some not. There’s no obvious way for users to organize their apps page, although, so it’s not clear why they’d use it instead of just bookmarking preferred sites, all the same.

The most-used cloud-based service in all of Internet-land is Netflix’s streaming movie service. And during there is a "Netflix app" in the Chrome Web Store, the system doesn’t support Netflix video at this time. So there’s that.

It’s when you move too far beyond mere Web-browsing, to tell the truth, that the limitations of a cloud-based Chrome OS computer stand in starker relief. Want to download MP3s and at the time transfer them to your phone or iPod? No dice. You can, all in all, purchase a Rhapsody subscription for $10 a month and stream music on your computer or iPod touch, nevertheless that’s an unsatisfying solution if you have a penchant for obscure Kansas punk-bluegrass bands that haven’t made it onto that service’s radar.

Name your multimedia, and similar problems appear: Want to store your photos? You’ll have to upload them to Flickr, Picnik, or Picasa—and upload them from some other device: the machine wouldn’t pull photos from my iPhone when I connected it via USB. During there is an SD card slot, I had no luck getting it to access my camera’s memory card either.

Not everybody wants to make stuff, all in all. At this hour, the CR-48 isn't even quite as functional as the iPad, which was early on derided as a machine for consumption, not creation. True, Chrome OS’s reliance on a physical keyboard makes it better for writing, messaging, and e-mailing, however iPad offers a better gaming and movie-watching experience—and the tactility of its multitouch navigation engages in an in every way novel way, should the contingency arise. Chrome’s meager advantages aren't enough to qualify it as a full-blown OS—it’s deep down, and somewhat unapologetically, a computer wrapped around a Web browser—nor to justify its somewhat puzzling existence alongside Google's Android OS for mobile devices.

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