Anand's Thoughts on Google's Chrome OS
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 8, 2010 6:23 PM ESTPerformance
Atom is fast enough to run a Chrome browser and without the burden of Windows 7 I’d expect Chrome notebooks to be fast enough for most things. It remains to be seen how smooth things like scrolling Flash video playback will be however.
Google did provide two measures of performance in its announcement yesterday. Chrome OS should boot in around 10 seconds and wake from sleep instantly. These two imply that there’s some element of solid state storage at play within the Cr-48 but I’m still awaiting confirmation from Google. Edit: Storage on the Cr-48 is confirmed to be all solid state, no platters, thanks everyone!
ISA Independence
Chrome OS is currently only supported by Intel x86 platforms and will launch with Atom based designs, however with the apps running on Chrome OS being web based, from a developer standpoint the Chrome OS is effectively ISA independent.
If Google (or someone else, the OS being open source) chooses to port Chrome OS to ARM, so long as the underlying OS is full featured, apps that run on an x86 version would run on an ARM version. This leaves a huge opportunity for ARM to enter the notebook/netbook market with the Cortex A15 in the coming years. The OEMs would have to demand it however, and I suspect we will only see that if Intel drops the ball on being price/performance competitive in this space.
Whereas an ARM (or non-x86) threat to Intel never really existed in the Windows world, it’s very possible with Chrome OS.
I will add that while Chrome OS could enable ARM based notebooks, I don’t suspect that will happen in a major way anytime soon given what I know of Intel and ARM’s respective processor roadmaps.
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zodiacfml - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Firstly, Anand presented the article nicely with good points that have nothing I disagree. I am sure, the OS will see success similar to netbooks or the Chrome browser, not for everybody, but works very well for some.Anyways, as JamaCheerio above, this will save me from being free support for many people regarding their machines. I could install this thing to people who only use a computer for getting online and also think that they're almost 90% of them.
For personal use, I could use this in an old or low end notebook/netbook which can support digital cameras(for travel purpose) which could be already in the plans of Google as many people update their online presence with pictures.
R3MF - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
i don't like it, and the failure of atom is not a failure of desktop OS's in light-weight platforms, fusion will fix that deficiency.MagmaTism - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Just install the latest Ubuntu and Chrome to get a feel for the performance.I'm using a first Gen ATOM on my netbook, and the experience in Chrome feels faster than my 2.4GHz Core2Duo laptop. DOM animations are buttery smooth as is scrolling. The entire experience is blazing fast and doesn't make me want in any one area. It even handles flash content very well with smooth operation on full screen animations. The canvas also performs quite well as tested against the popular chrome experiments site and heavy Javascript apps like Google Documents load quickly and interaction has been flawless.
Let me say this again: On my first generation ATOM netbook, the experience is flawless.
I expect that not only will CR48 have superior hardware, but the OS will be far more optimized than mine is now, in addition to SSD which will further reduce latency and improve perceived performance. Added on top of this, is an iteration of V8 which improves performance even further, and increased GPU acceleration of website content.
Also, thanks to recent optimizations by Adobe, flash videos consume next to no CPU for 1080p video using GPU hardware.
I fully expect chrome OS to put more powerful notebooks running windows to shame from a user-experience standpoint -- not raw computation, of course.
TonyY001 - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
If apps can only be downloaded from the Chrome OS store how will companies build internal apps that they want to run on Chrome OS?iwodo - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
$400 is too expensiveiwodo - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Why does the stupid Filter continue to NOT ALLOW ME TO POST and say I post SPAMShadowmaster625 - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
"The selling point behind a netbook is that it’s small, cheap and fast enough for browsing the web. The problem is a netbook isn’t fast enough for running the OS that you need to run in order to get access to the web."The selling point behind a netbook is not "small, cheap and fast enough". If that was the selling point then they would have a low budget low capacity SSD installed. But they dont. They ALL have craptastic 250+GB 5400rpm hard drives. Why? What good does it do to have 238 more gigabytes than you need to surf the web on Windows 7? These guys could very easily stuff a windows 7 installation onto 12GB, including hibernation space. And you only need a few extra gigs for "surfing the web". So why are there no 30-40GB SSD options on netbooks? I know exactly why. Because people dont think. They hear that stupid Intel jingle on tv 200 times a year for 15 years, then they mindlessly buy it or market it even though it is just a scam. And everyone falls for it. Where is the critical analysis? Why can I not go anywhere and buy a cheap "netbook" for "surfing the web" that has a logical storage solution? (ie 30 gb SSD, which costs maybe $10 more than a 250GB notecrap 5400rpm hard drive.) Instead we are all stuck with something that crashes the moment you jostle it.
Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Correction. I forgot about the plethora of craptastic 160GB 5400rpm hard drives.strikeback03 - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Do the Windows 7 Starter TOS say anything about shipping with SSDs? Obviously more than 1GB of RAM would help too, but they don't do that often.aapocketz - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
AGREEDThe original eeepc netbook ran linux on a small low capacity SSD. Then people demanded windows and big HDDs, and now thats all they sell.
However, I am glad Google is willing to push the original eeepc type concept, and with their software knowledge they may be able to pull it off better than ASUS did. The included cellular radio may help sell it too. Just don't count on it. Sometimes I think google has the throw a bunch of crap on the wall to see what sticks approach to innovation.