Why ChromeOS is a Smartbook OS

Now that Google's Linux based ChromeOS has been fully revealed and is actually available for some machines, one thing appears clearly: ChromeOS is more like a Smartbook OS than a Netbook OS. Let's sum up what ChromeOS is about: it is the Chrome Browser as an operating system. Remember a few years ago when people said that the browser would become the OS? That's what Google did!

Like Smatbooks ChromeOS is all about the web

ChromeOS is designed for one thing: let you surf the web quickly and cheaply. ChromeOS is designed to work with SSDs (and only SSDs) from the start. Since the objective is to get you online fast local storage does not need to be abundant: it needs to be fast and cheap. Nowadays 4 or 8 GBs of fast flash memory will be faster AND cheaper than almost any HDD, so Google choose to impose flash memory. Software-wise ChromeOS is little more than a Linux kernel, X , Clutter and the Chrome Browser, which is probably the fastest route to starting a browser. So thanks to it's minimalistic software stack and focus on local storage speed over capacity ChromeOS gets you online fast on inexpensive hardware. There are however some drawbacks.

Where ChromeOS fails

There is one huge drawback to this approach: if you can't get online, what you can do with the machine is severely limited. Of course the machine is not completely useless when offline: thanks to Google Gears you will still be able to write in Gmail or Google Docs, but that's pretty much it. That's where you see that this was not designed for netbooks, because netbooks are supposed to be able to still perform acceptably when offline, while with ChromeOS offline is an afterthought. Another difference is that a netbooks can run some pretty heavy applications: the GIMP works fine on an Atom processor and playing local video is OK as long as it is not in HD. ChromeOS on the other hand relies on Youtube and lightweight online apps to do pretty much everything, meaning you will not get the same level of functionality as a netbook, even when online.

The future of mobile computing?

ChromeOS is not the future of mobile computing, but a part of it. The way I see it mobile computing is branching in 3 main categories:

- Full laptops: These run mostly Windows (or in some cases Linux or OSX), have powerful processors, DVD drives etc... They only run for about 3 hours on batteries and weight 4 pounds or more but have a lot of local storage and are functional even without an internet connection.

- Netbooks: These run Moblin, Ubuntu netbook remix or Windows starter edition. They are lightweight multi-purpose computing devices that feature an Atom, Neo or CULV processor. battery life is up to 8 hours, local storage in up to 250 GBs. They can still work fairly well when not on the network.

- Smartbooks: These run ChromeOS or Windows CE. They are cheap single putpose devices that have one main function: get you on the web. They very portable and have exceptional battery life, but have little local storage and thus are not very useful when disconnected for long period of time (like when you travel).

The idea behind ChromeOS is really that consumers should have a full laptop or desktop as their main computers and purchase a ChromeOS device as a companion to use when on the road. This is close to the idea of the original EEPC 701. The problem is that in places where mobile bandwidth is still selling at premium prices and access points are rare ChromeOS devices may end up being either very expensive to keep connected or very useless as soon as the user's leave the range of their home's wifi network. Add to that the fact that a lot of online video content (like Hulu) is only available in the US and the usefulness of the machine as a source of multimedia is very compromised when you consider the international market. ChromeOS is a good idea in places where you have the network infrastructure and online media content to support the model. Unfortunately this is not the case in most countries beside the US.