http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_client
Assuming everyone is like you is a good sign you're an idiot.

Yeah, thin clients are a great DESKTOP concept, not a LAPTOP/NETBOOK concept. They said themselves this was designed for netbooks, and the OS shows it. If you want to call me an idiot, don't post a link to a Wiki article about Thin Clients when the target device here is netbooks.

"Yeah, thin clients are a great DESKTOP concept, not a LAPTOP/NETBOOK concept."

Uh what? No, "thin client" has absolutely nothing to do with how MOBILE your client is. In fact, the whole concept of offloading stuff to a mainframe/"cloud" corresponds perfectly with making your client as "thin" as possible. Stop talking about things you don't understand.

Way to be an asshole about it, stop judging someones intelligence from the fucking internet.

Thin as in size within the computer, not the physical size of it. Yes, thin clients can be very small since a lot of hardware doesn't need to be used, but you're not getting it. You don't make a LAPTOP something that needs to be connected 100% of the time. This OS is designed for netbooks/laptops. Think about what you're saying. This OS requires 24/7 access of the internet. What would that be ideal for? A laptop or a desktop? The answer isn't too difficult.

On the other hand, you want a mobile device to be as light as possible, less power consuming and cheap. That's just not posibble in the conventional way.

The idea is nice, you pointed out the biggest flaw, if you cannot connect you cannot use (most of) the device. I can imagine that concept to work well in big cities where wireless inernet access is available everywhere.

phones need to be connected to the phone network, so what is the obviously preferable solution, mobile phones or landline phones?

oh wait. B<

Yeah but even look at mobile phones. There's plenty of places where you can't even get a phone signal, let alone 3G coverage.

My point is that a laptop or desktop or netbook should be ready to use at any time, regardless of internet connection. This just cripples it for no reason at all.

My point is that everyone has a mobile phone to be able to make calls or be reached by others, even though the network doesn't cover 100% of the globe. If you want to do your pc work somewhere in the desert or a cave, you'll probably have a hard time with google os, but same with any other computer? Doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to use it on trains/buses/public places as well though.

Exactly my point. We JUST made it with cell phone coverage, Wifi is a different situation. We're not even close to any decent coveraeg of WiFi.

They didn't make this OS for the market today, it's been designed for the future realities of the market.

They had to start somewhere and release something at some point for decent testing and user feedback.

But there's no advantage to the sacrifice you're making. Sure, you have to be connected to the internet 24/7, but in exchange for what? There's no advantage to it, only a dis-advantage.

Disk Space?

You're so short term and narrow minded.

Yes, but ONLY if the cloud was OPTIONAL. This is my problem. Everything is forced into the cloud. You have no choice. All they would have to do is make the cloud optional, or work in sync with your HDD, or at least work with it, and I'd talk more highly of this OS. But it's not optional, it's forced. This means if I have to have music on external media, or have it stored in my cloud. It's wasted resources for no reason.

Short Term + Narrow Minded = Gillz

You argue like a woman.

How appropriate you fight like a cow.

Are you really so stupid that you can't realise how the future will mean everything will be totally cloud and it's a total waste of time & resources for google to bother with making it work like a standard OS?

Maybe you should realize that the future might NOT be all cloud computing? Sure, it might go that way, but you have to realize the future might still prefer local media and storage.

But it will be cloud computing for all bar a minority of people who google don't care about.

But you haven't proved how it WILL be the future, everything is just a theoretical right now. This OS is some form of evidence, but there's still a large chance cloud won't be the future.

Observations of pretty much every technological trend?

The other trends that point to cloud storage is...?

Convergence, Mobility and the general pursuit of efficiency.

Efficiency is NOT having media stored in a remote server to be constantly accessing it.

Actually it is more efficient, if you have five devices of different sizes (phone, media player, netbook, laptop, desktop) then it's inefficient to have all your relevant media/documents/data copied onto each device every time as it's simply wasting resources and time (have to update each device when a change is made).

1 cloud system > 5 individual systems

GIllz & iNkind: I'm Really happy for you and i'ma let you finish but FFRRAGGEERR has the best 1sided arguments of ALL TIME

Cloud computing will help prevent viruses/spyware/malware, will give even more info about your habits to advertisers (this is the main reason that every company will do it), will gradually phase out personal hardware and upgrades entirely, allows for you to access the same data across any number of devices, etc...

You really have to know nothing about computers to not see that this is the future.

edit: Oh, and cloud-based computing will also kill piracy.

There's no doubt in my mind that it can be the future, I just don't think we have the resoures to handle such a task (networking wise). Even in 20 years, I can't imagine the internet handling the load of cloud computing. If you took all the data that was accessed from my hard drive, multiplied that by the number of PC's, and put that bandwith on the internet, do you think we'd even be close to handling that kind of traffic? That's why local media is still booming, no one wants to wait an hour for data when they can get it instantly.

Subtract downloading of illegal software (which cloud computing would do) and bring your bandwidth up to speed of the likes of Japan/Sweden. Tada! More than enough to go around.

I guess that minority will include all gamers - or are you really thinking that games will end up virtualised on a server too? Will never happen for the games people here play....

Do you think the games industry is going to let you choose?

Don't be ridiculous.

Old technology and the ability to store data locally will always be an option but ultimately very little will need to be stored locally.

You can still use tapes, CDs and VHS but who really does?
Only a minority of weirdos because the newer alternatives are so much more user friendly and efficient.

There you go with the "efficient" word again.

How big is Doom? ~4Mb.
How big is Quake? ~50Mb
How big is Quake 3? ~500Mb
How big is Crysis? ~6Gb

Do you see a trend?

There is no way the games industry is going be happy with downloading that level of data on demand QL style, nor will they move to that "run it on the server" system that was touted a few months back.

Actually, I can very much see them doing so in the future (streaming).

Gaming will all move over to consoles.

Are you saying people will play games like crysis on a netbook?

maybe you should realize that he doesn't have to prove it.

Google can't hope to efficiently compete with today's standard OS. Windows has such a strong position especially with 7 working quite well, and for the rest there is always linux.

On the other hand there is not really cloud based system, yet.

So we have two scenarios:

a) Everything stays like it is, google wasted some money on developement. They can afford that.
b) At least a good portion up to almost everyone goes for cloud-based, google has an enourmous starting advantage and earns billions.

That makes is a very good product decision.
Btw. there are so-called "tools" economics for making and verifying such decisions, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth-share_matrix

HAHAHA for that cow comment [+]

The advantage is that Google gets more info about what you do, so they get more money for the info that they give to advertisers... In exchange, they offer you every convenience you have NOW, but without having to have as much hardware on YOUR end.

Your complaints of wifi are still a non-issue, since mobile broadband is so easy to get, and is about the same price as the regular broadband that you would pay for at home anyway.

Wifi is NOT easy to get. Even downtown Toronto is fucking ridiculous.

Do you even know the difference between wifi and mobile broadband?

Yes but mobile broadband is still very expensive, coverage is decent at best, and speeds are shit.

Speeds are fine, especially for using a mobile device. Coverage is fine, and will EASILY fill in the gaps for your wifi issues. Cost is no more than you pay for regular broadband, and you can get a mobile broadband card for your PC so you only need 1 bill.

also stop bashing new technology just because you apparently live in a backwards place

Come on, it's Gillz. has he ever shown any foresight whatsoever?

Useful tips, if you download it:
1.) To use the vmdk file, you should open VMware and make a new virtual machine. One of the options will be to use an "existing virtual disk."
2.) The username and password to login to Chrome OS / Chromium OS is your google account!
http://goschrome.com/forum/

Being online 24/7 just doesnt work with current 3g/edge/wifi coverage and data prices..

In the future when bandwidth and coverage aren't an issue, a light weight cloud laptop will be usable and probably awesome.. but that is still years away.

But everything has to start somewhere right..

I read somewhere that there will be web applications, so if people make applications like they do for the iphone.. we could just see alot of the same software developers making the same things they do for pc but for chrome..

Its actually quite exciting when i think about it..

Yeah, regardless of whether google docs is ever going to be able to replace MS Word, it's a pretty obvious and timely move for google considering what they ARE :)
Also, kind of funny how everything old is the new future now. It's literally a Russian saying :)

Being online 24/7 just doesnt work with current 3g/edge/wifi coverage and data prices..

We have flatrate on mobile broadband ;(

The UK's is capped depending on how much you pay per month.. which sucks... so does coverage outside city centers

Try developing your country some.

Ok, brb

Wow, what an uneducated fool. Learn something about the size, demographics, population density and relative access. Then learn about something called "profit motive". It's where companies don't have to give you shit if there's no money in it for them. You don't build a millon train stations over the sparsely populated US or Canada, compared to the densely populated centres of Europe and Japan when they would waste resources and earn NO MONEY causing the companies involved to go out of business and hence provide NOTHING.
Same thing for wifi and mobile broadband. It's NOT YET A UNIVERSAL THING. To develop a country the size of the US with THAT MUCH COVERAGE (and coverage is spotty in even the most densely populated nations) would cost a fortune the taxpayers would not be able to afford.
The US is NOT EUROPE. It doesn't have 500 million residents in an area larger than mainland China. The US is a massive country with a relatively small population scattered near seaboards. It's not feasible in ANY way to have universal coverage.

And if you're environmentalist, I don't even want to discuss the damage this could cause by developing pristine areas.

Just to clarify I don't think anybody is suggesting they supply wifi to areas with nobody living in them.

Are you implying that the UK is in USA?
Wow.
That's education right there.
Well played.

having everything online is good for newbs(think your parents, grand parents etc), they get a virus or hw failure they dont lose all your stuff.

The stupid thing is having to be online to work, notebooks are ment to be portable

If you're not online, you're of no interest to google.

Besides they are thinking ahead into the future, it is not required for Chrome OS to be the big thing now they just had to start somewhere.

It won't be long until if you are in an urban environment then you'll be able to connect to the internet.

I'm in a pretty rural area, and I already have access 100% of the time with 3G/wireless ;)

Indeed :P

There's no need for a computer if you're not online

That's nonsense. You're being just as dumb as Gillz.

Trolled :(

:(
http://i48.tinypic.com/mhvxhi.png

<3

who woulda guessed

if you want a fast lightweight OS for everyday standard crap, use linux. if you want to play games and doubleclick setup.exe's, use windows. if you want to sell your soul online, send your password to AOL admin or install google OS. :<

seems a nice os, loading all apps in a webbrowser ...
could be suitable for casual users ... who don't want to occupy themselves with systemconfiguration stuff ...

btw, watching this video it seems google outsources their work to india & china

also I hope google fails :-),
you can really imagine some eye that always follows you ...
I'm already glad chrome and googlemail didn't establish themselves

Outsource their work?

Heaven forbid they simply employ people who are up to the job regardless of where they were born and brought up...

Googlemail? Do you mean Gmail?

I think he means Yahoomail.

yeah, I mean gmail,
it's just that it is called googlemail here in germany, because there is already some other e-mail provider with the same name,
you know, it is first come first serve concerning rights on a name

Yeah. But I'd say that Gmail is pretty wide spread, so I would definitely say it's established.

you're right that not many people use googlemail/gmail in germany.

i only recently made an account there ( half a year ago i guess).

but the thing is, its just that not many people know about it.

they're either using gmx or web which both suck. googlemail is the best email service

How do gmx and web suck? They are free, work 99,8% of the time. And....they are free....

limited space, limited package size, theres ads everywhere and and they send you emails all the time.
you should seriously try googlemail. its way better.

even if you use outlook with web or gmx. if you go someplace else you still have to use their crappy homepage. and you still get their emails.

with google i have like 7 gb free space, get no ads, the homepage is minimalistic and works like outlook.
i'm not even using outlook that much anymore.

That looks like Jeff Goldblum's Indian love child.

All data is stored online (So AUS users are fucked)

Well I fail to see what this has to do with Austrian users.

AUS = Australia?

Was going to go with one or the other, but since noctis is around more often than say Python, I went with Austria. :D

AUT vs. AUS

smart kid.

Australian internet is generally terrible from what I hear. low monthly data transfer caps after which you're cut down to about 5KB/sec. i haven't used it personally but i have a lot of friends living there + my brother who was there for 2 years.

also, i have many demos of australian players on my hard disk and most of them seem to have bad spikes / packet loss.

You're right about the low monthly caps... although quite a few ISP's are a lot better now (some offer around 100GB a month now).

The packetloss you mention sounds strange. 99% of the time, gaming on Australian servers is quite smooth.

ok these are rather old demos though, so it could be that.

Yeh.. or someone using a budget ISP :D

My netbook has a 1.2ghz processor, weak onboard graphics, 1gb ram, and 8gb hard drive space total. I bought it a year ago at $300, and I'm sure they haven't increased the specs much without greatly increasing the price. At the time, it was a high-end netbook.

Unless you have a netbook, you probably wouldn't understand. For one, the vast majority of computer users don't do more than browse the web, read email, and type documents. You say that this would be bad for her because she can't install applications or upgrade, but there isn't any situation where I could think of a typical user needing to - most especially on a netbook.

Even your tech savvy user will be using a netbook for the above reasons (unless you're an idiot and bought a netbook instead of a laptop) since THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE DESIGNED FOR. Netbooks are the future of computers (and are outselling everything right now), so Google focusing on them specifically is a great business move. XP can get a tad sluggish on a netbook, and the intel integrated graphics support on linux is laughable.

As for needing internet to use it - so what? For one, wifi is EVERYWHERE, and that's just if you're a cheap bastard. My netbook has mobile broadband built-in, so this isn't even an issue. The whole concept has been in development for a long time, as Microsoft has been planning such an OS since long before Vista. This model will likely be how all operating systems will work in the next 5-10 years.

I won't buy a netbook anytime soon ...
I'm sick of all the technology ...
isn't it enough to have the internet at home ...
anyway I don't see a netbook competing against something like the iphone in terms of accessing the internet for fun at some place ...
a netbook is still to big ... also a netbook won't replace a laptop, the screen is just too small for working with it ...

My netbook uses 1024x600, weighs 2lbs, and is an easy fit in a hoodie pocket (would be small enough for my back pocket if I got a cheaper model, but I love the HP netbook keyboards) when traveling. I've stopped using my phone as a mobile internet platform since I got my netbook, and I don't regret it at all.

Wi-Fi is NOT everywhere. Just because you live downtown NYC and can get Wifi everywhere doesn't mean that's how the rest of the world operates. Even downtown Toronto is a bitch, but take any city smaller than that. You might have Wifi at work, and probably at home, but what about on the road? Lunch at McDonalds? It's useless. I don't think people realize that Wi-Fi isn't EVERYWHERE. It's becoming more available, but it's definitely not like cell phone service.

I have mobile broadband, since I'm not poor. I *DO* have internet everywhere. McDonalds has wifi, too.

Every single developed nation is investing in Wireless internet connection, by the end of the next decade you will be able to get internet access in every single urban area, rural areas might not be as well covered but as mentioned mobile broadband covers that.

some areas in my city are already wi-fi enabled. the provider plans to reach the entire country within the next few years. for other places, we have USB modems which you can plug in like a flash drive and get connected. i was filming in very rural areas last week and we could still connect from certain villages, although it was slow. there's no problem when you're in a city.

Indian internet options usually lag behind the rest of the world. where in Canada do you live?

think about the situation in a couple of years from now. when the time comes, Google would have had a major headstart.

new netbook from asus out soon with dual core atom 330 + ion graphics chip, 250gig hdd, 2 gig ram etc etc

I doubt they've found a way to make it small enough to be considered a netbook. The hard drive is also not solid state. Well, potentially, both could be possible, but it'd be thousands of dollars.

Another problem for the size is the battery life. Even with my netbook having such low specs, I can only pull around 3 hours on battery (with low brightness, and moderate processor use) - and almost 4 hours on linux with some tweaking.

This is a pretty innovative idea, but it's still before it's time so it's a little too novel. In the ~near future~, every dark corner on Earth will have reliable, fast, and cheap internet access. I mean, even now I can't walk around campus without seeing terminals everywhere.

And as long as the OS is constantly saving the changes you made, there shouldn't be a problem if the internet goes to shit for a second. I don't know about you, but I do all my school essays and stuff on Google Docs now and I've never had a problem.

We'd no longer have to worry about backing data up on hard drives that just die someday.

The only thing I'm concerned about is that now *everything* you do online is easier to see (so privacy issues) and of course, the fact that Google is turning into a monopoly. I get pissed at Microsoft's over-priced failing shit as much as the next person, but competition is ideal for quality/cost maintenance.

This is not innovative AT ALL.

Oh ok. So who else has come out with a super compact online OS lately?

Probably every unix clone and their mother.

yeah, the idea is old. its just a matter of wether the time is right, or if it's still too early for a thing like this...

I love it. Just plain genius.

It's perfect for netbooks, less good for laptops and awful for desktops.

i read an article about the future of operating systems something like 5 or 6 years back.

it was all about how eventually, there wouldnt be any harddrives anymore, everyone would have remote data storages accesible from everywhere.

this is kind of the first step in the direction.

further down the line (according to this article) it would come to a point where the OS (if you could still call it that) would adapt to what you're doing and automatically try to suit your needs, whether you're working on a spread sheed, or writing a text.

you wouldnt have to open seperate programs, but the system itself would adapt to what you'Re doing.

sounds like science fiction tho, but so would 3g if you had told someone about it 10 years ago

That sounds really cool. I think I've seen a lot of sci fi anime where the OS is controlled by a chip in the user's brain. Very cognitive science.

Why wouldn't it be called an OS?

maybe still OS, but more on a global scale, not like you had it running directly on your machine-

I don't see how the term Operating System makes any such distinction.

I really dislike the idea of remote hard drives, its only a matter of time before someone at these companies sells on the identities of everyone on the planet.

Surfing habbits, emails etc, it's all gonna be tied into a massive database and you just know its gonna end in tears, you'll literally be able to find out what sites everyone visits, political sexual orientation etc.

The downfall of mankind = The Cloud.

That sort of information will be worthless by the time totally remote hard drives and cloud computing comes about so it won't be too much of a problem.

All the noise people make about privacy and freedom et cetera is nice and all but ultimately the way technology/politics/whatever is going everything is joining together and you can either go with it and reap the rewards or fight against it and end up being trampled on.

And reap the consequences when a company didn't properly secure or backup your data.

lol yeah, of course loads of businesses are going to be really relaxed about such stuff.

They seem to be.

Yeah, those banks are always losing all your data.

know what you mean. i got a new phone last week, i'm afraid of losing it, and not because i spent some money on it. its so synched up with everything...

You think that's not happening right now? Even the info on your trips to ESR is being sold to someone.

he's the reason why we had all the ads for gay dating sites

remote storage is what mediafire etc are really for, its just that most of them dont have a .exe app or explorer plugin to drag n drop files, or just use a trojan and have full access to your home pc

They are just trying to build an ecosystem behind it...Pay whenever you use...Directly or by paying for broadband...

By the way is it even an OS?
Look how this industry makes you shell money,
1)first they sold mainfraimes and thin client.
2) Virtual machines to exploit mainfraimes
3)Then they sold us PC's
4) Virtual machines for PC's(joke?)
5) Now thin clients, for thin pcs...
6) PC= mainfraimes...
Then....
Mobiles->mainfraimes mayve

its not that bad, most things are business solutions,

most office workers are ignorant and need win explorer to have remote ftp access on security profile linked to they're office profile folder, with a virtual ftp drive on the laptop

You're an idiot. This isnt Windows 7 Beta.

The direction theyre taking with this is a "cloud" based OS. Google's online services atm limits it. But who's to say Google wont buy dropbox ie or make their own version with online storage?

Some Google dude mentioned in an article not long ago, that in the long run Android and Chrome OS would likely merge because of the common and shared tools.

The web is gonna look different when Chrome OS matures.

it doesnt matter what the OS is, none will suceed without a virtual drive to open and save files like a local drive and remove the "i lost the file" excuss, even if it needs a popup progress box

Its kind hard to believe that in the future all information will be remotely accessed because that means you have to trust someone to hold your information and it is much safer for you to store it locally. Sure you could say banks already do the same thing but we pay them to do that and they can cover with assurance but when the information that could be leaked is a amateur porn movie, lol that can't be solved with money. I can only say that in the future it will be both.

You'll be paying for the storage and security of your data.

da cloud suxx0rz

what an innovative concept when you forget UNIX for a bit :>

and yeah, for all those who are hyping the cloud and fall for that marketing bla bla just check what happened to Microsoft/ Sidekick a couple of weeks back.

What cloud marketing/hyping?

the chrome os is nothing more then a new version of google desktop, which failed miserably,

all they really want, is to spy on you 24/7, and with an OS that stores everything online , is a good way to do it.

only an idiot who doesn't know what privacy means would ever use this crap

most netbooks are fine at running windows XP with ALL the stuff you use on your desktop of a 6 years ago and that's a lot. I see no reason to cripple a netbooks posibilities with this OS really...

Most have a 1024 x 600 resolution or more!, i mean come on:
a few years ago 1024 x 768 for DESKTOPS was quite common!

1,6 Ghz cpus and 1 GB ram, a few years ago people were fine with that and ran tons of programs on such a platform on their desktop.

Netbooks are not as crippled as some companies want you to believe..

it will all change when everything is 5g/wiMAX and uploading is alot faster then 2-5kbs

windows expierence = perfect baby

so now google doesn't only have all your emails and searches, it has all your shit. nice