Cr-48_fullIn contrast to my review of Jolicloud from the other day, John Scalzi has posted a review of the other popular cloud-based operating system. Google sent him a Cr-48 with ChromeOS to try out, and he has set down his thoughts. Scalzi found a number of things to like about the hardware, and liked how ChromeOS was implemented largely to stay out of the user’s way.

But he also zeroed in on a couple of the big problems with a cloud-based operating system. First, many of Google’s on-line applications simply aren’t “there” yet for heavy use. When he tried to write a novel on the device, using Google Docs, he quickly became frustrated and ended up migrating it to the desktop.

And second, there’s that little problem with needing to have access to the cloud in order to do anything.

A cloud-based OS might make excellent sense for someplace like South Korea, which has a magnificently speedy online infrastructure, which blankets the entire (relatively compact) country from one end to the other. In the United States (and Canada), where the broadband wireless and wifi access is relatively slow and full of all sorts of holes, gaps and dead zones, what you end up having is a computer that may or may not be a paperweight a non-trivial portion of the time. To its credit Google addresses this by having a Verizon radio built into the computer, which one can activate and have access to 100MB of free data over the Verizon. But this really is the computing equivalent of one of those tiny spare tires that you’re supposed to drive on only long enough to get to a repair shop.

Though Scalzi doesn’t bring up e-books specifically, Google’s vision of cloud-based e-book access comes in for a number of the same problems. I wonder if Google will manage to address these issues?

Of course, as Scalzi points out, for people who mostly just blog, email, tweet, and check Facebook, this could be all the computer they need. It’s just the power users who need something real under the hood.

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