Okay, maybe that was a little early! Its been the news of the year, the announcement of a new lightweight operating system that would boot up within seconds! Very recently google declared the open source-ness of its browser based OS! and with the help of a few, I’ve got my hands all over it. You want try it too? Then say thanks to hexxeh and read on

• First decide where you want to install your Chromium. As little as 1GB USB Drive is enough thanks to Hexxeh and his Chromium “Diet” build.
• Download the build from the links on his website.
• After downloading, you have to setup the USB drive, make sure you backup all data and its empty.
• Mac Users: After inserting the USB, you have to “Unmount” it. Which, as i recently found out, is different from simply ejecting it. Head to DiskUtils and unmount your USB Drive.
• Without taking away the glory, follow the instructions on chromeos.hexxeh.net for your respective operating systems.

Lets talk about Chromium itself shall we? Passing out any judgment at this stage would be very very stupid, indeed! Its atleast a year away from final build and as such, we can only comment on it conceptually and imagine where its headed.

Loading upto the login screen, even from a USB drive was within 6 seconds. Then you are taken to a very familiar Chrome browser interface. The first “tab” is what will be your place to execute or rather run web applications. The web apps, at this stage understandably are only links their pages.

A feature mac and linux users are very familiar with are expand, collapse, select tabs shortcuts.

What remains to be seen is how much of “native offline” apps can be accommodated for getting a normal user on board. Lets face it, netbooks are NOT the future. A simple user, college kid  or a guy with one laptop would want to do more than just be online (which itself is a lot). But then, we are not sure if they are the target audience.

Chromium OS is big news not because of its fantastic live changing totally mesmerizing OS, which its not by the way, its because its backed by a software giant Google.

Android and Chrome OS. The very thought of them brings some confusions of crossed paths. “Android and Chrome will likely converge over time” as said by Sergey Brin, till then Android will continue to be an Only mobile experience. Some bloggers report this as a confusing move on Google’s part. Not to me though, Chrome OS has a very defined preset goal. That is to be lightweight, quick loading time and to achieve google’s ultimate goal which is to totally eliminate installing software on HD and readily use stuff online. Had it been any other company, there would be questions and doubts, but its Google. Having used Chrome OS, It’ll be very exciting to see how it develops over the year. Would there be any room for casual users who like to play DVD maybe?

Android sure on its way, not there yet, but still on its way to become a force to reckon with. GigaOm reports that Motorola Droid has already sold 700,000 Units and already projecting a million Units before the end 2009.
The thing is… Chrome or Android, be good or bad, We Desperately Need it to challenge iPhone

I’ll tell you what we don’t need though.. more Ads from Adwords.

No related posts.