My thoughts on Google Chrome OS

As you may now, we have gotten our hands on Google Chrome OS, and my general thought is that its JUST A BOOTABLE BROWSER, at first the press conference made it seem pretty cool, but a rose by any other name is still a rose, and Google Chrome, even if you make it an OS is still Google Chrome.

To login you enter your Google account login credentials, (be it Gmail or Google Apps), then Chrome will open with a GMail window, and a calendar window. Here is where the problem came for me. I have a Google Apps account, this allows me to use Google’s services for my own domain,  there is no way for me to change the default “apps” it opens. Also the Apps screen that Google showed off at the press conference requires a @google.com user name and password so we were not able to test it out. Google Chrome OS at this time does not support Google Gears either, so all in all Google Chrome OS is just a bootable version of Google Chrome.

Now Google says that Google Chrome OS will be available only on netbooks (read you wont be able to install it yourself (unless you know what your doing)), so my question is to OEMs: Why would you pick Google Chrome OS? There are so many more feature filled OSs you can install, be it Linux, Windows XP, or Windows 7. Since Google Chrome OS is just a bootable browser why not just have an instant on version of Linux, and also Windows? Then you can boot up just as fast as Google Chrome OS and be able to quickly get online, then once you need to use actual applications switch over to Windows?

At least until the US has wide (and inexpensive) internet access where I can get access where ever I am, and the cloud has matured and evolved (I’ll talk more about this when I write about my week in the cloud), I don’t see how Google Chrome OS is going to have a nice user base. Its just too advanced for its time.