Beta Release of Google’s Cr-48 Gives a First Look at a Cloud-Only Notebook

I have to confess that as a “late adopter” – in terms of age and depth of experience, at least, if not actual hours spent tapping away at a keyboard – I was frighteningly intimidated in reading one of the first reviews of the just-released-for-beta-testing Cr-48 Chrome Notebooks from Google. Distributed to an air-quotes “lucky few” technocratis for test surfing, in tandem with the release to developers of Google’s open-source Chrome OS operating system, the Cr-48s are the first netbooks wholly designed for true ‘cloud computing.’ (Google’s Cr-48s aren’t commercially available. The first-generation of Chrome OS netbooks are scheduled for release by Samsung, Acer and other original equipment manufacturers in mid-2011.)

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I just made the jump from a PC to a MacBook Air, last having worked on an Apple platform more than a dozen years ago and, then, only briefly. While that switch was initially intimidating, it pales in my mind to the no-doubt figmentary fears of my imagination when I consider the switch to a system without a hard drive, on-board backup for my files, or even a desktop, for Pete’s sake! Google obviously holds a higher estimation of my basic computing skills and the simplicity of using their Chrome browser as a virtual desktop than I do.

The early review of the Cr-48’s highlights, by Fast Company magazine’s Austin Carr, is tantalizing, however. “Google is asking you to rethink the experience of notebooks,” Carr notes. “To some,” he predicts, “this will be a liberating experience that allows you to let go of the constraints of a traditional OS–hard drives, files, programs, folders. To others, that sacrifice and insular-browser focus–although entirely based in the cloud and free of typical OS burdens–can make Google’s Chrome system feel, well, claustrophobic.”

It seems clear that for programmers, developers or heavy-duty gamers – at least until the full suite of apps and cloud software is rolled out – pure cloud computing won’t be an option; however, for someone who spends virtually 100 percent of his time browsing the web, e-mailing or using basic documents and spreadsheets, the prospect of pure cloud computing with everything neatly stored and backed up on a remote yet readily accessible data farm is, as tantalizing. With a Wi-Fi connection, there will be no more cables, no more risk of a hard drive meltdown, no more need for anti-virus software that bogs down a system’s speed.

While little but the basic QWERTY keyboard on Chrome OS netbooks – and the on-off button, presumably – will look like an ordinary notebook, the Cr-48 promises a “platform optimized for surfing online,” according to Carr. Google’s Chrome browser is the portal to all the system’s features and everything else is built around it. Even the caps lock key – the bane of my keyboarding existence when I try to shift to upper-case with my left hand – is gone, apparently; replaced with a key to open a new tab or reload your current page. That should prove interesting for the (literally) ‘digitally-challenged.’

Although getting used to another platform, even the idea of yet another platform – particularly one that promises to be so uniquely different from either a PC or a Mac – was initially intimidating, I’m all for it if it delivers on half the online experience it seems to promise. Why not? Reluctantly, even for a “late adopter,” I’ve already learned to browse with my mobile phone . . . and to type, albeit slowly, with my thumbs.

Written by: James Barry covers online marketing and related topics for Wolf21.com, a Toronto-based full service internet marketing and SEO firm.