I absolutely love the fact that a laptop fully based around the web is being denied a caps lock key. Good riddance. I think 99% of its usage (constants aside) is for trolling/yelling.
I like to use it as my Control key, though. I'd be concerned that they would replace it with something else and I'd have to learn to twist my pinky unnaturally again.
This is exactly what I was about to say. It looks like they've used the caps lock position for the Fn key on the cr-48, so it looks like this may not be possible on this unit.
Then again, I guess it's not that big a deal since the ctrl key doesn't really get used on the web.
Photos of this laptop leaked several days ago, with greater detail on the keyboard. It is indeed a search key. The shift key also has a light on it, suggesting that it can be double-tapped to activate caps lock.
ok, so i must say web represent a very very very low priority on my internet usage. having only 'the web' would be like cable TV with only the weather channel.
"We're starting with the U.S. and will expand to other countries once we get the necessary certifications. To participate in the pilot program, visit the Chrome notebook website."
Any Googlers here (Matt_Cutts?) in a position to comment on how long we'll be waiting to hear about this? Because being accepted as a tester would absolutely make my December.
Matt_Cutts is technically a web spam expert, but he is also a generally high profile public facing Googler who knows such things. Maybe he doesn't follow android, or maybe it would be inappropriate to answer this; but it doesn't seem crazy that he'd know.
What the speaker said went along the lines of "after awhile the engineers settled on 48." It seemed like there wasn't a clear reason behind it, although my lack of chem knowledge could be why.
More likely the software engineers were only moderately versed in chemistry (in a didn't do it since high school/college way) and just doubled the atomic number to get the atomic weight, not realizing that for heavier elements more neutrons are required for stability.
Very disappointed it's US only (but used to it lately, being Australian).
I'm a heavy Google services user for work & personal (as i'm sure most people here are), and I start commuting 2hrs each way to work in a month, so something like this would've been perfect for the commute. I'd happily spend that time testing the laptop and taking part in feedback. Ah well.
I'm a developer and am always looking for the next big platform to develop for. This sounds absolutely perfect. I definitely agree though that if there is no text editor local to the machine I wonder how well it could be used for development, but overall I think it would be interesting to test the device.
I'm a little irritated by the end of this quiz telling me I'm "addicted to my desktop" and "why not switch to online alternatives?"
Hey Google, why don't you make it so I can indent lines with tab in Gmail, or give me some confidence that my e-mails will be properly formatted (i.e. as required on some mailing lists)? Why don't you make it so I can watch Netflix in one Chrome window without stuttering when I do some other browsing simultaneously in a separate window, or make it so I can use global hot keys to control music playback from random music players in a browser window? Why don't you make Google Docs work offline? (Announcement of "early 2011" posted today, at least.) Why don't you make it so I have confidence that I'll be able to get online and get at my data wherever I am, whenever I need it, without paying a fortune?
That's why I'm not switching to more online alternatives: the desktop applications I still use provide a better user experience and are more reliable. Google, your question reads like I'm the one with the problem.
>Chrome OS is for people who live on the web.
It runs web-based applications, not legacy PC software.
Google apparently thinks that being in control of your own computer is a "legacy" concern.
I guess directly empowering users is out of date, while trusting Google unconditionally with all your personal data is the new, hip, digital totalitarian future.
Interesting how the questions are framed, which sites are mentioned in the drill down sections, and in what order. (They mentioned weather underground, which I thought was interesting, since that's a very old school web 1.0 kind of site)
Also interesting how it graded me below average, even when I massively exaggerated how much I use web apps. It's almost as if Google has a vested interest in promoting the use of web apps, or something.
I think weather underground deserves a mention because it provides a lot more data than most weather sites. It may not be very fancy and dynamic, but most of the sites that are use their flashiness to distract from their deeper shortcomings.
Sure it does. That's what the premise behind Chrome OS is. Web apps are supposedly as good as their desktop counterparts. It's getting there, but I think not just yet.
Personally, there are only a couple of things that I don't do regularly on the internet: listen to music and text editing. (The only applications I add to Windows 7 on my netbook is Notepad2, Foobar2000, and Chrome.)
It says that I spend less time on the web than most people, which is weird, because I live surrounded by web developers and I am online WAY more often than they are...
They botched error handling I think. That happened to me once - turns out my text field was too long. Cut yours down to 140 characters and re-submit it, does that give you the confirmation page?
There's probably going to be an international trial soon. However, I can assume the OS will be released in free beta for you to test on your own hardware.
Since Google's requesting fairly intensive feedback, I can assume it's easier for their team to track usage in a domestic market.
This is different from the bare-bones quiz linked from Chrome's "New Tab" page. In any case, I filled this new one out too since it lets me actually tell them I'm a developer.
getting increasingly annoying that most things like these require that participants are US residents. Don't you guys care what us Europeans have to say? I'd would have liked to apply too.
