The Cr-48

[Qwertman]

Here's the story:

I looked out the window and saw the UPS truck come up. Walking downstairs I wondered what it could be. I had ordered some resistors and diodes for a project, but those would have been shipped through USPS. Now on my porch, I picked up the package with surprise at the fact that it had my name on it, and was kind of big. Confused, I placed it on my bed and started opening it.



This, I thought, looks like Woot.com style art. It doesn't have the logo though... and I don't remember ordering anything from woot recently. Hmm, I placed that aside and saw a shiny sheet on the bottom of the box with... stickers... on it...



Wait a minute. Are those? Yes, I realized, those were the very same stickers I had read about in that article on engadget
GOOGLE HAD JUST SENT ME A CHROME NOTEBOOK!

I had applied for it so long ago that I forgot. They didn't even send me email notification, but apparently I was one of the 30,000 or so chosen to test out Google's new Chrome OS on a free of charge laptop called the Cr-48, or Chrome Notebook (or according the the instructions sheet, whatever else I would like to call it).

I started squealing like a little girl and jumping and flapping my arms. I got my video camera right away and re-enacted the whole thing. I plugged it in and started reading through everything like the happy little camper that I was.

TLDR:

The Chrome Notebook is pretty sweet. It's pure black: no logos, no Intel sticker, no jargon or barcodes or model numbers on the bottom, just smooth rubberized plastic. It did, however, come with a decal and set of stickers for me to decorate it myself. It's really fast, and after using it for a day I've really realized how obsolete the traditional operating system is becoming. Everything I do is on the web. I didn't use my desktop once today. I probably will tomorrow, to edit video, but I wouldn't be surprised if video editing becomes a function of the cloud as well in the near future.

[Loken]

Wow man that's awesome! That box is really weird though lol. I didn't think people actually won contests in real life lol.

[Dashe]

That box looks like something that would contain a DIY jetpack!

[Qwertman]

Day three and I'm loving this. The only thing I've used my desktop computer for is video editing. And I've had to deal with updates and reboots on my desktop machine which I had become accustomed to but it's kind of cool that the cr-48 doesn't have that nonsense (especially for older people).

Even before getting this I've been making an effort to migrate to the cloud, but now that I have incentive I'm realizing the immense amount of things you can do without a desktop.

If any of you haven't checked out Google Docs yet, you should. I just got back home from a client's restaurant and they wanted me to make a poster for their new twitter feed. I made one up in Google Docs in about 10 minutes using images from the internet and a QR code, shared it with their gmail account, and then printed it from their computer. No flash drives, no email attachments, no file extensions, no downloading or uploading, just creating! I'm super excited for what the next few years have in store for us.

[Blues]

Wow Qwertman, that is seriously awesome. Admittedly I only barely heard about the event in focus, but the fact alone that you were chosen to test Google's new laptop reflects well on all parties involved. Tell us what you think of it as time goes on, ok?

[Qwertman]

I'm wondering if I should do a little blog about it...
Last weekend I went to the Michigan region National Ocean Science Bowl. The laptop was really useful, I was able to post updates to facebook, run over sample questions and look up vocab I didn't know, and even work on a client's website during the car ride, hotel stay, and event itself. Not having to worry about shutting down, or connecting to wifi, or watching my battery life was such a refreshing experience.

Not having a decent file browser was a gripe when I wanted to copy photos off of a friend's SD card from their camera. I was able to use the linux terminal though, since I activated developer mode a few days ago. Also, uploading the photos was not fun. This wasn't a problem with the device itself, but with Picasa. Picasa's web interface only supports uploading 5 files at a time and you must select them individually.