I am now the proud owner of a Google Chrome Cr-48 Notebook, code named “mario.” I’m sure you’ve seen a number of reviews of the device and speculations about where it fits in Google’s strategy and the cosmic scheme of things. I got mine on 2010-12-21, well after most of the pundits did, so I’m simply going to give you my take on it.
I watched the announcement live on 2010-12-07, and applied for the pilot program as a developer as soon as Google posted the link. December 7 is a special day – it’s the anniversary of the founding of the New York Philharmonic, it’s Pearl Harbor Day, and it’s my birthday. So, thank you Santa Google!
As you may know, I run Chrome and its open source base Chromium as my primary browsers, usually the newest developer build. The day of the announcement, every time I opened a developer build, each “New Tab” showed a link inviting me to join the pilot program.
That form was much simpler than the pilot program application – just shipping data, an email address and a check box to agree to the terms and conditions. So I filled out that form as well. I suspect that it was this second case – the automatic sensing that I’m an “advanced Chrome user” – that enticed Google to send me a pilot unit.
In any event, I’m one of the reported 60,000 people in the program. And I must say I’m very impressed with the machine. I think you’ve all heard about the limitations – it doesn’t mount USB memory sticks yet, the trackpad isn’t quite ready for prime time, and it doesn’t have Java. Other than that, it’s pretty near perfect. And of course, you can’t beat the price.
So how will I use it? For the moment, I still depend on my Linux workstation and laptop for heavy lifting. Large scientific analyses in R, Twitter data collection with Perl, PostgreSQL database management and document preparation in LyX still must be done on my workstation or laptop. If the Cr-48 browser ran Java, I could put my home workstation on the Internet and remotely access it via the browser on the Cr-48. That kind of remote access is standard equipment in openSUSE Linux!
Still, I am amazed at how much I can actually do with the Cr-48. I haven’t tried any of the online audio or image editing tools, and I haven’t found any online video editing tools. As my current focus is data-driven journalism, those tools will need to be there for the Cr-48 to replace my workstation or laptop. One positive note for digital journalists – there are a number of “whiteboard / collaboration” applications in the Chrome App Store.
For “big data” analysis, I’m planning to use Sage Notebook. As I noted recently, Sage Notebook is a collaborative online mathematical environment. In addition to R, Sage Notebook has nearly every open source mathematics package available. I’m not sure what to do about Lyx/LaTeX document preparation, though. Google Docs will do the document preparation, but the LaTeX tools require either a full desktop or some kind of server, and so far I haven’t found any servers that will do the job.
It’s too soon to speculate on where the commercial successors to the Cr-48 will fit into the overall market. We don’t know what their capacity, price or ship dates will be. But the Chrome Notebook looks to me to be a strategic success of the first magnitude.
Before I got my hands on the Cr-48, my opinion was that it was not a consumer product, and should be positioned as a small-medium business or an enterprise device. Google seems to be positioning it as a Windows PC killer, and I think it has the potential to do just that. Microsoft has dropped the ball on performance and security and Google has picked it up and run with it.
This is a single-processor 32-bit 1.6 GHz Atom machine with 2 GB of RAM. After you’ve signed in, it comes up when you open the case, ready for business, in less than three seconds. The last time I booted Windows on my 2.1 GHz 64-bit dual core laptop with 4 GB of RAM, it was over five minutes before I could even open a browser window! Of course, I don’t run Windows on that machine any more – it’s much too painful. I switched to openSUSE Linux nine months ago!
I still don’t know whether Chrome Notebooks will succeed as a consumer product. That’s going to depend on several factors. The iPad is clearly the horse to beat in this race, and I expect that the second-generation iPad and the first consumer-ready Chrome Notebooks will hit the market roughly the same time in 2011. And for consumers, the games, the music and the movies need to be there on the Chrome Notebook, and I’m not sure Google can get the media partnerships it needs, especially given Apple’s strength.
I am convinced, though, that the Chrome Notebook and Google’s cloud services are going to take business away from Windows PCs in small-medium businesses and in enterprises. First of all, there’s the issue of cost. If a Windows netbook of comparable horsepower costs $300US before installing Office, a Chrome Notebook with mostly open source software is going to cost considerably less.
And for a large enterprise, the IT nightmare that is Windows desktops and laptops goes away with a Chrome Notebook in the hands of every knowledge worker. Just the fact that there’s no sensitive corporate data on the notebook itself – it’s all in the cloud – eliminates a huge potential cost of laptop theft. For all practical purposes, a Chrome Notebook is virus-proof and botnet-proof. Google has found Microsoft’s vulnerable underbelly – security – and struck what I think is a significant blow there.
For those of you who, like me, are of a hacker / hobbyist persuasion, I’ve collected some links using Twitter and Curated.by here. So, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to flip the developer switch on my Cr-48! Thanks again, Santa Google, and Merry Christmas to all!
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