The Much-Awaited Google Chrome OS

Slowly but surely, Google has crept into our lives on the web. It has always been having a steady grip on its users, to the extent of irking the competitors. Google has been dominating in many ways in terms of the Internet. This time around, there is an attempt to dominate a user’s desktop!

Last month, the world witnessed the release of Google’s open source project viz Chromium OS. Google’s idea behind building this OS is to essentially create a thin client operating system for consumers. Chrome OS is all about the web and web based apps. 

Let us look at few main highlights of this OS

• It will run with a Linux kernel as its base.
• It will boot directly into the Chrome Web browser
• Since it is web based, it will not be designed to have local storage; all data will be stored in the cloud.
• Web developers would be able to build web apps that can run on any standards-based browser as its open source.
• Google will release the software to the open source community before the end of 2009
• Hardware partners for Chrome OS announced till now: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.

The best thing about this concept is that all the applications are web based. One does not have to deal with installation or even updates about different programs. Google also boasts about the intensive security options. The speed is another factor users can look forward to!

Few advantages of having such an OS:

• People can now access their emails instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot
• One can access data from wherever they are located
• No need to worry about backup files
• There is no requirement to configure computers with every new piece of hardware
• There is also no need to bother about constant software updates

Even though Google has promised many such things, experts opine about different issues. There have been several concerns such as the case of WiFi. A user may not be able to access it when out of range. Besides, the security is still a debatable issue. 

Few examples of things that would be difficult to do with Chrome OS

• To view a huge video which is present on the local drive, takes a fraction of a second to start the movie. This could become really problematic if the video needs to be viewed from cloud, especially for slow network connections. Also, one has to consider the time required to upload a video to Cloud.
• A user can have access to data on hard disk even without a network connection. However, Chrome OS uses Cloud based data storage, which means that an Internet connection is required to access the data. Also, a fast network connection might be required to be able to upload and download data.

For those who have tuned in a little late, click here to view link. Till then, we can only wait for the ultimate day!

In my opinion, Chrome OS will be a very specialized operating system which would be beneficial for many applications. But, it would not be a Microsoft Windows killer.