All About the Google Chrome OS

Instant Chrome

If there's one thing that Google's new Chrome OS doesn't lack, it's speed. To prove this, Google gave us a demo of the Cr-48, an Intel Atom based laptop loaded with the Chrome OS doing an instant-on from a standby mode. Open the lid, and boom, it's on. Wi-Fi's connected and all ready for your searches. It's so fast, we're told that the slowest part is actually putting your fingers to the keyboard and typing out your search query.

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Speedy Beginnings

As a operating system for a notebooks and netbooks, the Google Chrome OS may seem like an oddity in a world where most operating systems are built around the idea of a tethered personal computing experience, where you get a blank desktop with which to fill up with applications and programs to your liking and functions perfectly fine offline.

The Google Chrome OS however, works on a different philosophy and is designed to work best online with a constant connection to the cloud. It's also designed around the Chrome browser, and in this case with Google believing that the browser is the program where you spend the majority of the time when you're at a computer, makes it the primary starting point for anything you do.

"What we learned the last couple of years since we've been using Chrome and developing it was that you spend a lot of time in the browser," says Brian Rakowski, Director of Product Management for Google Chrome.

"And we realised that more and more we don't even launch any other applications we're just using web apps all the time or just using your browser."

While the aim back then was to make Chrome even faster than it was already so that you could use these web apps even faster and more easily, Rakowski and his team found that one of the main problems was the operating system itself. There was just no true support for the wide range of applications that they wanted to use or that the operating system was limiting just how fast the Chrome browser could be. It was these problems that led to the decision for them to create Chrome OS.

"We are now at the stage where we have a pilot program that started in November (2010), getting lots of feedback from our users," says Rakowski.

"Our team has made pretty amazing progress, we're using this thing (the Cr-48) almost all the time to do all our work. and it's getting much much better."

Cr-48 - Creation?

By itself, the unassuming black notebook doesn't actually look very impressive, you may mistake it for just another notebook but for the giant Chrome sticker plastered all over the unit. It's unbranded of course, and that's the way Google wants it. Actual retail units by their partners won't go on sale till perhaps the mid of 2011, but right now, the Cr-48 is just for testing purposes to make sure the software works fine. When asked, Kan Liu, Senior Product Manager for Chrome OS, was quite emphatic about this point.

"We're not announcing any of our upcoming hardware, but these current devices are built purely for testing purposes and uses Intel Atom chips," says Liu.

"One of the reasons we wanted to go with these less powerful devices or hardware was that we wanted to develop on basically the lowest common denominator first so that we can build software that runs super smooth and when we go on to other devices and other hardware it will be even faster."

Liu further adds that by doing so, Google will be able to identify "bottlenecks and slowpoints" in the OS, and if they can get these fixed on a low end system, would ensure that Chrome OS would run smoothly or even better on higher end systems. What Google didn't say though and what we are guessing, is that by making Chrome OS run smoothly on very low end platforms like those based on Intel Atom, it would make such retail units that much cheaper and help to drive up the adoption rate.

That said, while Google uses a pretty low-powered processor for the Cr-48, one of the requirements for Chrome OS remains that it has to have a Solid State Drive (SSD), which means that you won't have to rely on a mechanical hard drive with a slower access speed. And while the Intel Atom chip may not be a powerful processor as say an Intel Core i3, it's still a pretty capable chip considering that Chrome OS isn't actually designed to be an operating system like the more resource intensive Windows in the first place.

Verified Boot

During our brief time with the Cr-48, we were pretty much impressed with the speed of the notebook, especially the Instant-On features. While the original design intent in 2009 was to have a very quick booting machine of 7 seconds, the 2010/11 Cr-48 has a longer boot time of 13 seconds. This is because of a change in plans by doing a verified boot process that instead takes a little longer to start up.

While the OS doesn't check for the stuff it doesn't have (floppy disk drives anyone?) on boot anymore, when turned on, the notebook starts checking to ensure that nothing has been compromised. It starts at the firmware level, then on to the kernel, window manager and then Chrome itself. If there are any issues or security breaches, the notebook would then replace the current image with a backup.

If the backup is also corrupted, it will then start looking for another backup. If all the backups are in any way compromised, there's still the option of downloading an image from the Internet and re-imaging the device. Best part is, you don't have to worry about losing any data - everything is already stored online and you just have to sign in for it to be restored via the cloud. It's so easy to do that that Liu reimages his Cr-48 every morning just for build testing purposes.

Instant On

With the change in boot times due to enhanced security, Google has instead decided to focus on yet another aspect of the notebook - instant on from standby. This makes a lot of sense from a user perspective, especially when Google claims that the notebook can last 7-8 days in just standby mode.

"One of things that we realise that is people are actually spend a lot less time rebooting the machines and most of the time they just have it in sleep mode and they just resume it. And so, we actually spend a lot more time focusing on that and making sure that is super, super quick," says Liu.

When the Cr-48 is opened, you'll find that it's instantly connected to the WiFi and the screen turns on immediately. If it sounds extremely familiar, well it is, because it's just like something you'll find from a smartphone or a tablet using a mobile-centric OS. This seems to be right move to take, as most other notebooks out there do take a while to resume from standby. The only real comparison right now would be the newer Apple MacBook Air, which feels just as snappy when woken from resume.

"It's really nice, just knowing that if you close the lid it will come back as soon as you're ready. This means I don't walk around with my laptop open all the time," quipped Liu.

Ready to be Chromed?

Its been over two years since Google Chrome browser was launched in September 2008. Eight versions later, the browser is still being worked on and improved, with builds constantly released. In fact the last time we checked, the Chrome team has been working on version 10, and that many versions in the space of just slightly over two years may seem like overkill. However, the Google team works on a different cycle compared to the other browser teams and bases the version numbers when a stable release with new features comes out instead of a fixed 6-month release cycle.

Version 8, the current stable release of the Chrome browser, features a new Web App store and you'll find the same app store on Chrome OS. Downloading and using web apps if you lack Internet access however, means that the Chrome OS users will have a less than satisfactory experience. While the Chrome OS does have an offline mode support for some apps, it's still logically a device that works best connected to the cloud.

Even with a 'cloud' connection though, it some may find it hard to see the appeal behind a Chome OS powered device. This is especially so when you consider that netbooks with Windows 7 or a Linux OS (like Ubuntu) installed has the same features but has much more flexibility. Then again, Google is going with the view that these type of specialised devices are actually much more appealing for users who spend more time travelling around and for businesses who want a lower cost in maintaining machines. They may be right in this, but we'll see how retail units will turn out when they are released late this year.

Lastly, Google's other OS, Android, has been getting lots of kudos in the smartphone environment, and the latest version, Honeycomb, has been reworked for tablets. If you think about it, there seems to be plenty of similarities between a tablet-based OS and Chrome OS, to the point where Google even made a mock up of Chrome OS on a tablet. Google however, seems to want to keep Android for tablets and smaller devices while leaving Chrome OS for netbooks, notebooks and maybe desktops (though the latter doesn't make quite as much sense). Note though that Google co-founder Sergey Brin, has mentioned that both OSes are "likely to converge over time", though we're betting this won't be happening anytime soon.

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