Unplugged (Updated)

From CR-48

Today I am continuing my breaking-in of the CR-48. Christmas day I took it up to my mom's over night. I didn't much need it as there was much family-togetherness going on, but I did break it out as some point for one reason or another. I had the power cord with me but was able to go the weekend without so much as taking it out of my backpack. So for today's test, I find myself at my friendly neighborhood Starbucks. And I left the power cord at home. I know right. Living dangerously. I left the house with a full charge and walked the quarter mile or so distance. After ordering and sitting down I was refreshed to see that my the CR-48 still had 99% battery remaining. Now, after an hour of continuous use, it's at 88% with an estimated 7 hours remaining. Assuming it will continue to drain at a rate of 10% per hour, it is actually being pretty conservative. Not bad.

When I got here, I had no problem connecting to Starbucks' attwifi network, passing through their welcome screen, TOS, etc. and commencing with the web browsing. I'm now going to see what I can do with an SD card/USB thumb drive I brought along.

Ok, SD card inserted... nothing.

(20 minutes later) AH HAH! just found a little thing called "about:flags." Apparently by typing the phrase into the omni box, I get a list of the experimental features for Chrome OS that i can choose to enable as i see fit. Including a media player and advanced file system (which includes USB and SD card support).

And sure enough, my SD card triggered a notification that it was being scanned. Unfortunately, it would seem that "scanning" is as far as I can go through the SD slot... or the USB port. Oh well.

I'm now back home. After 2 hours of use and 2 more hours of standby, I am at 75%. There's some math there. Math that I choose not to do. That is all.

(Update: I ended up going nearly the entire week without charging. With moderate use every evening, I needed to plug in for the first time Thursday night.)

Shakedown (Updated)

From CR-48

So i have now had more than a day to play withe the CR-48. Like everyone else who has spent some time with this thing, I am very impressed with the quality of the hardware. This is no throw-away netbook. Overall, I would say that the build quality of this thing is better than that of the Toshiba tablet that I spent well over a thousand dollars on. Some of this, admittedly, is due to the perceived quality from the low-profile chiclet-style keyboard and the soft-touch matte-finish of it all. That aside, its still pretty darn thin and feels pretty damn sturdy.

Unfortunately, not everything about this thing seems ready for prime time (but then again I am basically beta testing), I had heard grumblings about trackpad issues before I had taken delivery. Sure enough, it is, in fact, multi-touch. When it wants to be. I haven't quite figured out how to get it to work when I want it to, though. The main culprit seems to be the clicky part that makes up the bottom half of the pad. If I rest my thumb on it and attempt to use the rest of the trackpad to move the cursor, it tends to freak out and not do anything. Additionally, when I try to take my finger off the trackpad completely and then click with my thumb, it will start to move the cursor around, sensing the slight movements of my thumb as I click. Luckily, the trackpad also supports tap-to-click, which is how I typically used the trackpad on my Toshiba. Two finger scrolling works perfectly as does two finger clicking (right clicking); though I will need to get used to it.

Okay, this blog post is dragging. Time for bullet points! Other things I've noticed:

• some video stuff seem sluggish or choppy (i.e. sliding menus, scrolling certain sites)
• videos in general run skippy (hulu, etc.)
• volume control causes the entire screen to flash white when playing a video in full screen
• gtalk doesnt work at all in gmail (but the gtalk app works fine)
• took about 5 tries to DL a zip file. That was annoying.

I am assuming that many, if not all, of these bugs will be addressed as the OS is developed and polished. We shall see...

Update:

• flash crashed and wouldn't come back while watching ustream. (sorry Marian...)

Thank you.

From CR-48

First I would like to thank Google for choosing me to be a part of their pilot program for Chrome OS. Of course now this means that I need to hold up my end of the bargain... You see, when filling out the form for the pilot program registration, aside from the usual, familiar survey questions, I was asked to state, in 140 characters or less, what would make me a unique (read: worthy) user of one of these sweet prototype Chrome OS Notebooks. So I threw down, and promised to not only provide the requisite feedback and bug reports, but to also use the CR-48 as my ONLY computer. Well, Google called my bluff and now its time for me to buck up and follow through.

But first, some caveats: this will only apply to PERSONAL computer use as my work is extremely specific about what I can and can't do on their work station computers, not to mention the outright ban on personal laptop use in the office. Secondly, I may, on more than one occasion use my Toshiba tablet to finish a design project I am already working on which requires the use of its tablet capabilities and drawing software. Though I may see if I can use some of the apps that are already available for Chrome. We'll see. And Starcraft.

So without further adieu...