Chrome OS Demo Video

Video from some of the Chrome OS event today showing what it looks like and acts like so far.

Looks disappointing to me. Everything is cloud based and there are no native applications. Isn't this just basically a netbook Linux distro like UNR with shortcuts to Google Docs, Gmail, etc, and no native apps?

I don't see any real innovation there yet. If you want a super lightweight OS that you can access Google Docs, Gmail and Twitter from, just put Puppy Linux on a USB drive.

 

You might argue that there's little difference to running linux chrome on top of a strapped down linux system.

The difference is that here the OS is designed to turn the netbook from a computer into a device. It's fully self-updating, without even prompting the user to do this. It's also self-repairing: each layer is signed, and if a layer no longer matches it's sign, it gets repaired on bootup. The OS part's only purpose is to reliably and quickly load the chrome browser (which in turn takes over the entire UI).

It's the perfect OS for your mom. She can never break her machine if it's running chrome os. All it needs to be fixed is a reboot. And because all the data is stored in the cloud, even a broken hard drive doesn't mean any data is lost.

 

Guys, do you know that you can download VM with pre-installed Chrome OS now? See details at http://discuss.gdgt.com/google/chrome-os/general/download-chrome-os-vmware-image/