Google Chrome OS; first impressions.

Google Chrome OS

A few of you may have heard that the search engine giant, Google, is having a stab at creating its own operating system – yours or mine is likely Windows (being XP, Vista or 7) or OSX (what Mac’s run on).

Now, before I start, Google’s OS wasn’t designed to work, or behave like any OS before it. As everything is based on the internet, referred to as cloud computing. This means that all your programs, apps and documents are stored not on your computer, but on the internet, which may be a little tricky to get adjusted to at first. However, this concept is something that you should look into if you’re buying a low power netbook that you’re using at home, or somewhere with a constant internet connection, or if you find yourself messing up or constantly adjusting your current computers settings allot. If this is the case, it may benefit you to install Google Chrome OS.

One of the great things about Chrome is that it’s just plain quick, you can login and be on the internet in less than 10 seconds, which by modern OS standards is nearly impossible, and would certainly require you to have a ridiculously expensive computer, so if all you do is go on Facebook, and YouTube and basic document creating then this is the system may be for you. Using Google’s vast library of apps you can create word documents, spreadsheets and presentations among other things.

There are some drawbacks though, in its current state you can’t do a lot with it. Sure you can get onto the internet, and create some documents but that’s about it. I can almost guarantee you that it won’t work on your current PC’s as there is no drivers out for it at the moment.

Well, I was going to give you a guided tour of it, but Chrome has crashed, what’s expected of pre-release stuff. Anyway, here are a few screenshots of it when it was working.

Chrome certainly won’t make an impact on Gamers and power users, apart from those that dual boot it with Windows, but it could make inroads into netbook OS’s and as a second dual booted OS. As is stands this OS has a lot of potential. I just hope Google gets it right.

-Sam Cooper