I’ve had the opportunity to test drive Google’s new Chrome OS for the past two months. The excitement I felt when my Cr-48 showed up on my doorstep has slowly disappeared as I encounter problem after problem. While I’m aware that this is just a prototype and there are bound to be kinks, the things that frustrated me are more than just bugs. On the computer user spectrum, I rate closer to the “power user” end of things, and that’s probably why I’ve been so disappointed in the Cr-48 as an everyday computer.
The most recent roadblock I’ve run into has involved the lackadaisical file management system and the inability of Chrome OS to properly interact with USB devices. I bought a Nook Color last week while visiting my parents, and while I was able to read books right out of the box, I was more interested in rooting it and loading my microSD card with music, videos and documents. Unfortunately, I had chosen to take my Cr-48 with me over my netbook, and was unable to do any of those things.
Within the first week of receiving my Cr-48, I had already downloaded dozens of web apps and extensions. I’ve been forced to disable or uninstall nearly all of the extensions to narrow down reasons for the browser crashing, and I’ve given up using web apps because they’re all pretty much just glorified web page links. I’m sure the quality and quantity of web apps and extensions will improve as Chrome OS and the Chrome browser gain popularity, but right now they’re in their infancy, and I want nothing to do with them.
Browsing the web on the Cr-48 makes me nostalgic for the days of dial-up. My usual routine of jumping between a dozen open tabs at a time causes so much stress to the operating system that I’ve had to try to train myself to work with five tabs or less, which I have trouble abiding by. If I had the time and energy to devote to maintaining my Google Reader, I could bypass going to my favorite sites and just get all the content in one easy place, but why should I be forced to do that?
I can’t watch Netflix whatsoever, videos on Hulu and Youtube are excruciatingly slow and choppy more often than not, and many popular web pages are just so damn media-rich that loading them on the Cr-48 drags down the performance of everything else. For something that is marketed on a platform of always being tethered to the Internet, the web browsing experience on the Cr-48 feels like a step in the wrong direction.
In its current state, Chrome OS isn’t an ideal substitute for a real computer. Sure, it might be a perfect single-tasking companion for students and technophobes, but for me, it’s more useful as a secondary machine for browsing Reddit, writing in Google Docs and checking my e-mail. However, as with all early forms of technology, Google’s Chrome OS will improve over time and slowly settle into the world of computing as an everyday service, just like everything else that Google touches.
Edit: Just a little post script to prove my point -- I tried doing a Google Image search for a Chrome logo to put in this blog post, and the page crashed. It can't even handle a simple image search. On Google, nonetheless.
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