Forum Moderators: goodroi
The first laptops powered by Google Inc's Chrome operating system will reach store shelves months later than expected and miss the holiday shopping season as the Internet company fixes software issues.
The Web-centric computers, intended as an incursion into territory dominated for years by Microsoft Corp and Apple Inc, will ship around the middle of 2011.
Google, the world's No. 1 Internet search engine, is holding off launching the Chrome-based PCs until it can fix some software bugs and make sure that the computers are compatible with other devices such as digital cameras, Google product manager Sundar Pichai said on Tuesday.
"Amazing progress, but we aren't fully done yet," Pichai told reporters at a press briefing in San Francisco.
I don't want a dumb terminal.
Chrome OS is at the stage where we need feedback from real users. Some of the features of Chrome OS require new hardware, but we didn’t want to sell pre-beta computers. Instead we’re launching a pilot program where we will give test notebooks to qualified users, developers, schools and businesses. We're starting with the U.S. and will expand to other countries once we get the necessary certifications.
The test notebooks exist only to test the software—they are black, have no branding, no logos, no stickers, nothing. They do have 12.1 inch screens, full-sized keyboards and touch pads, integrated 3G from Verizon, eight hours of battery life and eight days of standby time. Chrome notebooks are designed to reach the web instantly, are easy to share among friends and family, and simply by logging in, all of your apps, bookmarks and other browser settings are there. Setting up a new machine takes less than a minute. And even at this early stage, we feel there is no consumer or business operating system that is more secure.
In the first half of next year Chrome notebooks will be available for sale from Acer and Samsung. More manufacturers will follow. Also, Chrome OS is designed to work across a wide range of screen sizes and form factors, enabling our partners to deliver computing devices beyond notebooks.
Well, for one, my sister. And my mother.
Many (young?) people today think the Internet is just facebook and youtube, not even google, who needs search anyway? ,unbelievable for me before meeting some of these people, I came to the conclusion that after 15 years I've never been on the Internet. They only need a facebook computer and while they're there Goog will find the way to convince these facebookers of using goog products/services or force ads or something, no free meal here. They don't need software and google is just an app running on top of fb, the mass may be stupid but they're the ones who buy.
