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RSSAbout Google's highly anticipated Chrome OS operating system? Right, it's destined to be a total failure. So says InfoWorld, which, along with a gaggle of other press, were given a sneak peek of Chrome OS at Google HQ on Thursday.
Why the severe review? "Spotty" hardware compatibility; a wholly unoriginal user interface; and too narrow a vision. "The bottom line is that while there is virtually nothing that you'll be able to do with the Chrome OS that you won't be able to do equally well with Windows, there are literally millions of things that you can do with Windows today that you'll likely never be able to do with the Chrome OS."
Wait, no, it actually appears as though Chrome OS will do just fine, or at least according to Jared Newman at PC World. "Google's Chrome OS doesn't signal the apocalypse for Apple and Microsoft, but that doesn't mean the operating system won't succeed when it arrives next year," he writes. "Just like the Chrome Web browser, Google's carving out a small slice of the market for people who want the company's buzzwords of speed, security and simplicity."
Sorry, no, back up, Newman's colleague at PC World, Tony Bradley, is absolutely convinced that Chrome OS is dead in the water largely because Google's "web-centric, cloud-computing perspective on the world" doesn't jibe with reality, as evidenced by the fact that Flickr will never be Adobe Photoshop. "If it didn't have the word 'Google' at the front, nobody would care and most people would simply dismiss the effort," he insists. "Chrome OS will be little more than a niche product and it begs the question 'why bother?'"
Without overtly taking a side, Gizmodo explains that Chrome OS is just the first step toward a larger vision, which Google has been hinting at for years, and which involves consumers virtually living, i.e., performing all of their computer-related tasks, online. "Chrome OS is an explicit step towards making this happen, but the version we saw today is just an early, broad step," it writes. "Despite early talk about how Chrome OS could be a full replacement OS one day, suitable for regular ol' laptops and desktops, today's pre-announcement of a version strictly for netbooks included an admission that it would only be intended as a secondary OS." Read the whole story at InfoWorld, et al.
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