Displaying all posts with the tag 'Chromebook'
At the beginning of this academic year the hot topic in university was 'cloud computing'. Put simply, as you may or may not know, cloud computing is the ability to access everything you could possibly need (software, documents etc.) via an internet browser. The general consensus was that it would take a number of years for this idea to become a true, fully-functioning reality.
Google has released news about its Chrome OS, a computer system for people that don’t like computers. So what is it? Based on the Google Chrome web browser, Chrome OS is a fully-fledged operating system that operates solely online. There is no software running on the local computer except the browser, not even an anti-virus program. As such the whole thing operates a lot quicker than traditional computers that are running other well known operating systems.
It is reported that the operating system takes approximately seven seconds to start and can offer up to 10 hours of battery life if being run on a laptop similar to the ‘Chromebook’ that was revealed a few days ago. Every time the system is switched on it will automatically check online for updates and update itself if necessary. If it develops a problem it will simply re-install itself without any need to hassle the user and ask for permission. Is this really a good thing though? I know I certainly wouldn’t want my computer making decisions for itself!
The Chrome OS makes it easy for the user to access and edit his/her documents with ‘Google Docs’ as well as allowing them to read their email, edit photos and many other features that can be performed on a traditional PC. The obvious problem is that not everybody as a Wi-Fi or 3G connection all of the time, you cannot access the internet from just anywhere. Does this mean the whole concept is flawed? Google argues that it’s not. The argument is that as more and more developers take part in the project this issue will be resolved. The New York Times app that is available for the new operating system has resolved this issue by downloading the latest news items while the device is connected to the internet so that they can be browsed while the user is offline.
So to answer the original question, ‘True cloud computing - Is it finally here?’... Well, kind of. It seems that in the past eight months since the original debate started in university that the world of cloud computing has advanced greatly, but the idea isn’t exactly as we envisaged due to the fact that online applications and documents cannot be accessed from anywhere, anytime. If Google gets the developers that it needs onboard to help it solve this issue we could well see the cloud computing dream becoming a reality and if anyone can achieve this goal Google can!
For more information on the Google Chrome OS take a look here http://www.google.com/chromebook/features.html#
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