Thursday, February 10, 2011

Two Weeks with the Cr-48

Two weeks ago I woke up from a nap and to my incredible disbelief there was a package waiting on my step. Lo-behold it was Google's Cr-48. This was what I could manage to take a picture of in the process of updating it, I couldn't wait to just get on the web. (also, check out the sweet box it came in: upon seeing that box, I knew it was true and had my nerdy freak-out) My first impression was how small and sleek it is. The body of the computer itself is something to love about it. All black, and no labels. I did put the sticker on it, though. Shaking with excitement, the updates finished and two minutes later I was on the internet. First sweet surprise (after thinking about it it made sense) about the Chrome OS, was that all of my settings were exactly like on my chrome browser, because all of the settings are stored in the cloud. Within five minutes of opening the box, I had booted it up and was on the internet. After clicking through the basic tutorial, I started to browse! (and brag on some sites, of course) Now the browsing experience isn't flawless, but it gets the job done. And what can you expect, a free computer to test, it is going to have a few issues! But you can't complain about a free computer, right?

So some of my complaints (being worked on, I'm sure!)
-Not every plugin works. I have run in to a few sites where the flash simply doesn't load, and there is no quicktime support. Youtube videos only have recently been updated to HD support, and it is a little buggy
-USB support is very limited. I did manage to find the Flags, and enable the file browser and media player. Both work to a little extent, though the media player will only play .mp4 movie files as far as I can tell. Also doesn't support portable hard drive, just sits at "Scanning Device." I would like to be able to play all my videos from the portable hard drive, and take full advantage of the 8+hr battery life on road trips.


All this being said, the computer rocks. For the last two weeks I have been using it fully as my primary computer since getting it. Only once or twice have I needed to use my tank of a laptop, and that was only to convert some videos to watch on the Cr-48. I have my life in "the cloud," and it is pretty easy to get on the cloud with a computer that does it in less than 20 seconds. I will try to update this blog more with my experiences with it, but leave some feedback if you enjoy! For all I know I am speaking to nobody, which wouldn't surprise me, as I am such a brilliant writer. Maybe I'll keep to tweets.