Five Things You Can Expect From Chrome OS Products

Google is making a bold move in 2010, entering the operating system market with Chrome OS. The product is very different from Windows 7 and Mac OS — it’s much more focused and much more limited. For some users, it will work out great. For others, it might not be what you’re looking for. For consumers that are always connected to the Internet, Chrome will be a fantastic OS that will be available on a variety of inexpensive products. If you still need more info on what Chrome is, be sure to check out this article. Once you’re up to speed, here are five things you can expect from Chrome OS products.

1. Chrome OS Products Will Be Cheap — Ever since Asus kicked off the netbook craze with its Eee PC line, consumers have been gobbling up inexpensive laptops. Chrome OS will continue the trend and push prices down further. The most popular netbooks today use Windows XP or Windows 7, which means part of the cost goes to paying Microsoft an OS license. Chrome products will not have that burden. Personally, I rather have a more expensive system that can dual-boot Windows 7 and Chrome OS. Hopefully that will be an option that will complement the flurry of inexpensive Chrome OS products that will hit in 2010.
2. Chrome OS Netbooks Will Boot Crazy Fast — Since the operating system is being designed with flash memory in mind, Chrome OS products will not be bogged down by hard drives. At its announcement event on Thursday, Google showed a Chrome OS laptop booting up in seven seconds. Keep in mind this is an incomplete version of the OS on unoptimized hardware. Final products should be even faster, allowing for the “instant on” experience. This is awesome and way overdue. I’m annoyed that my Windows Vista machine takes a minute to boot. It’s 2009 for fricks sake.
3. They Will Be Fairly Useless Without an Internet Connection — Chrome OS relies heavily on cloud computing. It uses the Internet for storage and basically runs web applications. Without Internet access, Chrome OS netbooks are extremely limited since they will not use hard drives for mass storage.
4. They Will Not Serve the Needs of Core Gamers — This is definitely not an OS for enthusiast gamers. Remember, this is being designed for inexpensive netbooks with modest power (at best). In this story, RPadholic Iceman asked about running Steam on Chrome OS. That’s not going to happen. Most Chrome OS products will be too wimpy to handle “real” games. Of course if you’re addicted to Flash games, you’ll have a blast.
5. Chrome OS Will Disappoint Multimedia Junkies — The lack of a hard drive limits the appeal of Chrome OS to multimedia enthusiasts. While streaming audio and video has come a long way, you absolutely need local storage for the highest quality sound and picture.

Like Smartguy said in my previous Chrome OS story, Google is basically reinventing the dumb terminal. It’s a bold move that has terribly interesting ramification for the future of personal computing. For a lot of people, Chrome OS is perfect — it will offer cheap products that let you surf the web, perform office tasks, communicate with friends, and more. While some will be able to use it as a primary computer, it will be brilliant as many people’s secondary system — particularly for road warriors (the business kind, not the wrestling kind).

I’ve been dreaming up all sorts of Chrome OS products and scenarios in the last 12 hours. I’d love to hear more about what you think of Google’s foray into the operating system market.

Author: RPadTV

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