Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Moving to the cloud!

It's been 5 days since I received my Google Chrome OS CR-48 laptop. I got a call from my wife last Friday asking what else I had ordered for Christmas. Our Christmas shopping was done and we weren't waiting for anything else to be shipped. She informed me a box had arrived at our house and she had no idea what it was.

I told her to open it (after she confirmed it was addressed to us) and we got off the phone. Minutes later, I received a MMS picture on my phone of a strange box with some sort or weird schematics on it. I had signed up for Google's Chrome OS beta testing the week before and had forgotten about it, resigning in my mind to the fact that I never "win" anything.

The next text to arrive on my phone said "it's a laptop". I still had not made the connection, so I called her back. She said it was a laptop, had no markings on it whatsoever, and looked like a joke because of the funny things written on the included paperwork. That's when it hit me, this was Google's Chrome OS laptop! The CR-48 had arrived on my doorstep. I told her check the address again, make sure it was mine. She did, and it was.

Once home, I couldn't wait. I installed the battery and booted it up. The Chrome logo came up and I was excited. I have been a Chrome browser user for about a year now and love it. Immediately after the logo screen, a registration box came up. With two small boys excited that their dad was home from work, I knew the laptop would have to wait for me to give the boys the proper attention now and it would come after they went to bed.

When all was quiet on the home front, I got my new toy back out and booted it up, prepared to give it the time needed to get it up and running and see what all the buzz was about with Google's Chrome OS. I logged into the laptop with my familiar Google account, agreed to the EULA, connected it to my wireless, took my picture for my profile and up came Chrome OS in all its glory. As a tech person, I wanted to get "under the hood" and see what was different between the Chrome OS and the browser that looks exactly the same. I clicked on the "wrench" to get to the settings and dug around.

I soon came across the page that had all of the OS information and noticed it was updating on its own. Soon after, a message came up and notified me the laptop was going to reboot. It rebooted and after the short 10-15 seconds I was right back where I was before. Freaking amazing.

After that, my first night consisted of playing. I played with Google's web store and "installing" and "uninstalling" extensions I hadn't yet tried with my Chrome browser, but might be useful living completely in the cloud. I "installed" apps that I thought I couldn't live without and surfed my usual nightly sites reading the news, Facebook, e-mail, etc.

The next day I  resolved to set up the free 100MB/month of Verizon 3g service Google provides for the next two years. I went through the set up on the wireless settings area and it went to a page stating it was activating my service. After a short wait, it notified me a problem had occurred and I needed to contact Verizon customer service. My first problem with the CR-48.

I called Verizon and after about 30 minutes on the phone with a very nice customer service rep, who seemed like he had supported a few CR-48's already, he had me in a command prompt area and entering some very complex commands and switches to set up the service (for those reading who would like to get behind the GUI on a Chrome laptop, ctrl+alt+t will get you there). The Verizon customer service guy got my 3g service set up and it has worked fine since then.

Days 3, 4 and 5 have consisted of moving into my "cloud". Before the CR-48, I have somewhat resisted Google docs and storing my pictures and videos online. I rarely even put pics on Facebook to share with my friends and family, let alone using something like Picasa. My first move was to start getting myself more familiar with Google docs and move some of my things into it. Then I looked to address photos on it and hit my next snag.

I didn't want to get on my Windows laptop and move a bunch of pictures over to Picasa and then try to manage them from my Chrome laptop. I wanted to put the Chrome OS through a thorough test of using it from start to finish. I had taken some pics of the CR-48 to post onto Facebook and brag about my early Christmas gift, so I took the SD card out of the camera and plugged it into the SD slot on the CR-48. Then I waited.... and waited.... and waited.

The CR-48 doesn't recognize SD cards despite it having a slot. So I went back to my Windows laptop and uploaded my pics to Picasa. Kind of a snag if you can't get your pics in the cloud if the laptop you are trying doesn't recognize SD cards.

Once the pics were on Picasa, I went to the Google Chrome Web Store looking for a photo editor. One of the "featured" apps on the Chrome store was the "Picnik Photo Editor". I played around with it and manipulated a few photos with it to see what it was all about. It's certainly not Photoshop, but it will do in 99% of the photo editing I do with pics.

A couple of other problems I run into that I'm sure Google will address before going public with the CR-48, or whatever they end up doing, is the touchpad on the CR-48. It's horrible. The first night I looked up a lot of stuff on the CR-48 while I was testing it, and found over and over again that the testers hated the touchpad. Google bragged about it a lot in the tutorials I came across and I wanted to give it a fair chance. That lasted about 2 days.

The touch pad is jumpy, doesn't right-click like it's claimed, and even cuts in and out from what I can tell. I plugged in my cordless Logitech M505 mouse and it IMMEDIATELY worked. No waiting on drivers to load, it just worked. I couldn't believe it.

The second hitch I've come across is another popular complaint in forums, articles, and blogs on the CR-48 and that is Netflix. I watch movies on Netflix often and the CR-48 can't as of right now. I'm sure it's in the works, but I miss my Netflix. It may not take me long to have to get my Windows laptop out to watch some movies.

I've enjoyed my first few days in the cloud and haven't run into situations where it's been more of a hindrance than any other technical issues I deal with on a Windows laptop every day. The only other things I would add to the wish list, but I understand they would be somewhat obscure compared to most of the feedback I'm sure Google is getting on the CR-48, is that I would like a Zune app that allows me to download podcasts I'm subscribed to and sync to my Microsoft Zune, and a Blackberry manager app to work with my phone. Those are the only two reasons I've turned on my Windows laptop the last couple of days and would have to if Google had a solution.

I enjoy living in the cloud so far and look forward to participating the development of this cutting edge. More to come soon.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Chrome OS!

Welcome. I have received a Google Chrome OS laptop (aka the CR-48) and thought I would blog about my experience with it. I just received the laptop on December 17, 2010 and I am still making my move to the cloud.  More posts to come with my experiences.