First thought about Google Chrome OS

I have been hearing rumors of Google Chrome OS since Google Chrome browser was out, and today, the rumor became real. If you haven’t checked it out yet, now you can take a look at the newly announced OS, “Google Chrome OS – FAQ“.

Google Chrome OS is a project by Google Inc. to develop a lightweight computer operating system devoted to using the World Wide Web. Announced on July 7, 2009, it is set to be released during the second half of 2010. The Linux-based operating system will sport a graphical user interface based on Google’s Chrome web browser and will run on systems with either x86 or ARM processors, and designed for netbooks.

Talking about coincidence, I just read a post from a view on the thought of the Linux App store, “Linux Version of App Store“. As a web developer, I could see that websites are playing a much more important role in our daily lives; we could not bank online, order products online, plan our schedule online and many more things that that we used to rely on our phones, agendas and, most of the time, physical interaction. Especially with the rising of Web 2.0, the application of Ajax has definitely enhanced the experience of online applications; now the boundary between desktop and web-based programs is getting thinner and thinner.

Now, let’s take a look at what’s the advantages and disadvantages of Google Chrome OS and why I am seeing it as a powerful OS to take over parts of Windows or any other OS’ market share:

Advantages:

1. Free

Like most of other Google products, Google Chrome OS doesn’t cost you anything. This will for sure attract people to try and get familiar with the system. I am not a Linux person (yet), but I did spend a couple weeks with the Ubuntu community just because of the quantities of freeware available to Ubuntu users.

2. Fast

Sometimes you might just want to check your email online, but with regular start up process, you computer must check your BIOS, then check the booting partition, then load system file, and check your hardware and so much more. When you finally can launch up your browser, you check you email, and that’s it, you need to shut it down. The whole process just took 5 minutes of your life away.

With Google Chrome OS, you will only need less than 10 seconds to launch up the browser after you hit the power button. And I am not talking about resuming from sleep mode.

3. Cloud Computing

With hundreds and thousands of Google’s servers, your result data could be return and displayed to you almost instantly. What that means is that you are not required to have  a powerful machine to do powerful stuff. With Google Chrome OS, lots of APIs will come with it for developers to bring up their own applications like what’s been introduced in Linux Ubuntu.

No matter how good you computer is, things like dropping it to the floor, splashing water onto it or burning it with fire by accident will cause deadly damage to your computer itself and your valuable data that’s inside. When everything is in a reliable “server cloud”, you don’t need to worry about the safety of your hardware nor your data.

Moreover, with cloud computing, the chances of getting virus is quite minor. Why? Well, Google spends trillions into building those computing architecture; the security and stability should be reliable comparing to personal computers.

4. Light-weight OS

Google Chrome OS’ first target is a netbook which has relatively low performance in graphic and CPU calculation. As I mentioned above, most of the program’s main body is with Google’s server; so you basically only need to have the interface installed on your local machine which is extremely small size-wise. Users will also experience a fast OS that won’t really have to do heavy-duty calculations. You might not notice it, but your computer is definitely doing more than one job spontaneously; more jobs will require more resource and thus higher hardware requirement is needed, with Google Chrome OS, you are just simply running one single browser which require much less “juice” of your computer.

Less resource-demanding also means less power-required. For example, to push the whole system running, the average battery life of a fully-charged one is about 4.5 hours, but if we just need to get one single “browser” to run, the battery life is possibly be pushed up to 3 times. It also means that without any battery upgrade, we get more time in working and surfing.

5. Pre-loaded software

With the introduction of Google Docs, the era of Microsoft Office is fading away. Even now, when you have a newly installed computer, you don’t really need to install any document processing software; just get your system running and log in to your Google account to start your work. When Chrome OS is here, you will not be surprised that Google Docs, Google Maps, and so much more awesome products from Google are built-in to your system. (For full list of Google applications available to end users, you can check “More Google Products“.) Just like Apple Macintosh, your machine will work out-of-box, except you don’t have to pay a cent to the OS.

Disadvantages:

1. Can’t stay away from internet

Most of the applications take place online and this feature will of course limit the usage of the OS. If you are out of the range of internet access points, you can’t use most of the applications that came with Google Chrome OS. However, with 3G, HSPA, and 4G coming up, the future battle platform between operating systems is up in the air; when the population of mobile network is large enough, the disadvantage will become minor, however, this limitation might slow down the expanding of Google Chrome OS.

2. Limitation on choices of software

If you are Linux, you can select software form the open source community because everyone can code and donate what they have come up with. However, with Google Chrome, the main program platform is on Google’s server; there should be a limitation on distributing the software freely even it’s freeware. You might, possibly, get third party software that’s “certified” by Google and run on your local machine that’s like a plug-in of your Chrome OS.

Note:

Google Chrome OS is still a browser inside; it might not get as popular as the other main stream systems due to the reliability on the internet. However, with rising number of 3G network users, it will get more and more popular with no doubt. After all, nowadays, a lot of people turn on their computer simply for web surfing and email checking.

It might be too early to review this newly born OS (Not even a beta version is available for end users yet.), but the first glance on the system gave me a very positive feeling. When the beta version is available, I will download and try it for sure, and at that moment, I can have more detailed write-up posted here.