google chrome laptop


SNESFAN

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I just got it in the mail about 5 min ago, I didn't even know I was getting one. I signed up about 2 months ago and I got woken up by the UPS guy delivering a package on my doorstep.


tl;dr version


alright so used my Google ChromeOS laptop for the majority of the morning and I have to say it's an unusual experience. I will just start off and say, if you are not a fan of apple's view of a controlled operating system then you might hate this, on the other hand, if you like apple's "it just works" then you might actually like this more than your mac.


First impressions


What this is basically is a laptop that's only purpose in life is to run chrome browser. It is linux based, determined after a little investigation I found the file table. It's absolutely a unix based OS. It's more linuxy than say OSX that shares the same unix backbone but it's less linuxy than say ubuntu and increadably less linuxy than say redhat or solaris.


packageing/unboxing


the laptop arrived in 2 boxes one inside the other, the 1st box being a ups box was plain jane just used for packaging. the 2nd box is what you would get from say a best buy or walmart or something like that. Box contained a rather comical spin on an instuction manual power adapter laptop and a bunch of stickers. The only one I used was the chrome logo sticker as seen in the pictures below I posted it upside down a la mac book or something like that. It looks spendid.


Hardware


build quality is extremely high for a "disposeable laptop" fairly solid plastics and decievingly light comming in at just a bit over 3lbs. The keyboard is my favorite part by far, the best I have ever used on a laptop, satisfying "clack" and the perfect amount of travel. I am typing this right now on it and aside from my palm hitting the mousepad every so often no frusteration at all. In fact I just went in and disabled the "tap" and that problem is gone. The trackpad is similar to the uni-button apple design where the bottom half of the trackpad is your clicker. I find this a little fusterating because I like my right click context menus and you can't travel with your right and and click with your left. If you just use one hand you have to get used to moving and clicking with one hand only. It does not appear to be multi-touch but I can't confirm that just yet it does sence two inputs but the mouse does jump around when you introduce the second input. Screen is bright and vibrant extremely thin and lite like a macbook air or one of those sony vaios. One usb port, vga port, full sd, headphone jack stereo speakers, webcam, microphone all work and are of acceptable quality and placement, nothing spectacular, but sufficent.



Code:
Processor: Intel Atom Processor N455 1.66GHz 512K Cache

Chipset: Intel CG82NM10 PCH

Motherboard: Tripod Motherboard MARIO – 6050A240910 – MB – A03

Ram: Hynix 2GB DDR3 1Rx8 PC3 – 10600S Ram


Read Only Memory: ITE IT8500E Flash ROM

SSD Drive: SanDisk sdsa4dh-016G 16GB SATA SSD

Wireless Wan: Qualcomm Gobi2000 PCI Express Mini Card

3g Adapter: AzureWave 802.11 a/b/g/n PCI-E Half MiniCard

Bluetooth: Atheros AR5BBU12 Bluetooth V2.1 EDR


connectivity


the laptop comes with a 3g cdma modem and a free for 2 years 100mb per month plan with verizon, after hitting the 100mb your access is cut off untill the beginning of the next month. A off contract $9.99 unlimited data day pass can be purchased and a by month plan can be purchased as well. I haven't used the 3g modem yet so I can't contend to the speed and quality but I'm on sprint which uses the exact same cdma towers as verizon and the signal and speed are exceptional. It has a wireless n wifi connection and gets great signal range and easy connection, no problems, just works.


battery life


quoted battery life is 8 hours with wifi or 3g and although I haven't gone through a complete power cycle I can honestly believe it, I've been using this solidly for 3 hours and still have 5+ hours and 75% remaining. Non-continueous use with stand-by time in the area of 1 week plus can also be believed. Netbooks say 8-10 hours but you might only see 4-6 hours of real life use. I can see this doing 8 hours of real world use.


software


well this is the most important but most variable part. This can make or break any device but luckily it's the easiest modified fixed corrected or completely changed. While this is just an extremely minimal OS with a browser it works great. There are some little things here and there I would change. But overall if you want to just browse the net and buy into the whole data cloud concept then this might be for you. I don't have anything to hide and if someone wanted to see my browsing statistics and see how often I go online shopping or what type of porn sites I visit then more power to them. Your ISP knows all this info about you anyway and there is no guarantee they aren't selling this info, at least google throws your statistics into a pool rather than singling you out as a person before giving that info out to ad companies.


alright sorry for that tangent, ok software it's a device based around a browser. Flash works, html 5 works, java does not. Anything that can be sandboxed will work anything that needs installed in addition to your standard run of the mill browser plugins will not. I will go ahead and say this thing is totally safe from any viruses, you don't have root access unless you hit some hidden switch under the battery and everything can be wiped and restored without any need to configure anything because all your settings are on your google profile. Think of a non-shitty implementation of roaming profiles. If any of you have ever used roaming profiles... you know what I'm talking about. The concept of "disposeable computer" is great as made comical by some youtube videos by google. A lab tech goes through like 8 laptops in the course of writing one word document where ever couple seconds someone comes in and completely physically destroys the machine with fire, smashing, liquid nitrogen etc etc... and finally on the 5th or 8th laptop or whatever he finally completes the paragraph and prints the word document he was working on.


final thoughts


if you can use chrome... then you can use chromeOS, there isn't much more to it than that. I can't reccomend this as a main computer for most tech savvy people. I can reccomend this as a main computer for my grandmother though. I can say this would be a good travel computer, or living room computer. ChromeOS should be what netbooks are running. While this is physically bigger than a netbook this would make the perfect netbook if it was ran on say a eeepc or acer one or somthing. If most of your time spent online is browsing facebook or forums then you might be the target audience. If you want to play games, or do any kind of tinkering or customization, then this might not be your thing. Now I haven't seen a pricetag on a new one I can say I would spend about 200-300 based solely off of functionality and form factor. The 3g makes me think it's in the 300-400 price range or higher. Subsidized from a carrier with monthly plan I could maybe see this go for 150-200. I don't know.


if you have any questions or want me to test anything let me know and I will gladly do anything in my power (that won't damage the computer of course)


cheers


pictures

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I signed up too a while ago, I had forgotten that. You're lucky to have one :)


I am in the UK by the way, and no UPS guy for me yet.
 
updated review


pilot program says US only at the time being. I'm sure they will expand to europe eventually. I hope for your sake sooner rather than later, also hoping you guys get google voice at some point in the future it's a kick ass product, they just allowed us to port our existing cell phone and land line phone numbers to our google voice account and we can now switch carriers and voip call without fear carrier restrictions or price gouging.
 
Well this gives me hope that I may get mine someday, I signed up a while back as well and havn't heard anything about it. Would be a nice surprise for UPS to show up and hand me one.
 
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