A lot has been made up for Google Chrome OS and it’s notebook. It transpires that Samsung and Acer would manufacture laptops for chrome OS.
Is cloud computing inherently better than the “offline model” we have come to rely on? If the recent Amazon outage is any indication, I would prefer not to stick with it. In the same vein, I prefer my data to stay with me.
However, there is a huge business opportunity lurking behind such an initiative. Manufacturers in India (for netbooks/laptops/tablets) are dependent on Microsoft for a tapered down version of it’s utterly useless operating system. They could have easily sponsored a home grown “Indian initiative” for Linux and installed it on a bare bones hardware with Wifi and 3G connectivity. I reckon that using ARM processors, a basic display unit with a keyboard would suffice the price limit of around $200-250. It can be done.
One doesn’t need dual cores to run the fancy software; in any case, I hardly use the computing power at my disposal. But there was no choice in the market. Antix (a derivative of SimplyMepis) or even Arch Linux are good enough alternatives (not to forget Fluxbox and XFCE or E17) as the alternative desktop platforms to power the applications.
The telecom companies could have easily subsidized the model, charging it in their monthly bills. A win win situation. An operating system free of any hassles and companies get to spread the hardware with bundled data plans. I had earlier explored the same option but I guess the fancy CEO’s (who are glorified assholes anyway), are not interested in the blurb.
So you’d find the Vodafone Zoozoo enticing people to try out 3G in a market where computing is still a luxury and smartphones market sorely limited.
Thats stupidity compounded by assholism (of the extreme); because crores are being spent on advertising to milk the few customers who venture to buy out the expensive data plans.
Blah blah blah.
Related articles
- Google announces Chromebooks: Chrome OS powered notebooks (venturebeat.com)
- Google floats monthly subscriptions to Chrome OS notebooks (go.theregister.com)
- Google Chrome OS Notebooks Available June 15 (fakeiitian.com)
- SlashGear 101: Google Chromebook (slashgear.com)
- First Google Chrome OS Notebooks Available June 15 (mashable.com)
- Google Chrome OS “Student package” notebook for $20 tipped imminent (slashgear.com)
- Don’t Expect Google Chrome OS on Tablets Anytime Soon (mashable.com)
- Google Announces Expensive Web-Only ‘Chromebooks’ (techland.time.com)
- More Chromebooks from Google; Chrome OS, Web Store updates too (arstechnica.com)
- Samsung, Acer to Debut Chrome OS Notebooks In June (louisgray.com)
