Andy Gapin

By now, you know all about Google+ and you might even be using it already. Cool, right? It’s funny how this thing is pretty much like Facebook, but not quite. It’s very similar to Facebook early on when many of today’s features hadn’t been implemented yet, but that’s kind of okay because they’ve seemed to have launched with the basics and the important stuff.

At first, the question is how does this stand a chance and how is it not exactly the same as Facebook. While it seems like that’s hard to answer, it’s not, there’s actually a very important distinction in ideology. Facebook is all about sharing stuff with everyone you know and opting out specific people that you may not want to see things. Google+ changes that and focuses on sharing specific things with the specific people that you feel are interested in that. This is Circles. If I want to share a bunch of nerdy links, I can just post those for one circle. If I want to post some stuff about music, I can post that only to the people that are going to be interested in it and not fill up the streams of people who don’t care. This is the way it should be. This is better. A lot better. And not only is this better, but this is the default. It definitely has the potential to make for a much better signal-to-noise ratio.

To me, that’s the one main distinction between the two besides features (which will come with time for Google+). And that distinction means a lot to me as someone that has a lot of groups of friends that all have different interests. My music related friends don’t care about tech stuff or running or snowboarding. Meanwhile, my tech friends may not listen to the same music as me. I don’t clog their streams and they won’t clog mine with stuff about…knitting…or whatever.

Google has failed with social before for a number of reasons. Either they launched with small limited betas that don’t allow enough people in to actually make it useful (e.g. Wave) or it’s too niche (e.g. Wave again) or it’s just a straight clone of something else with nothing new to offer and poor implementation (e.g. Buzz). This may only not be a straight clone of Facebook because of a single ideological difference, but I think enough was done right already to give Google+ a real future.

The big question is whether or not people will actually end up using it. Facebook has something like 700 million users right now. That’s a lot, but they lost a few million the US last month. That’s not a trend, but it could become one and it could be because Facebook isn’t doing it for a lot of people. Google+ could present a reason for more users to leave and I think Google+ could actually snag some of those users that have left Facebook already. One thing that helps is that the Google+ bar is just there whenever you’re on any Google site, right at the top. And you can share from it. Millions of people have Gmail open at all times, so they’ll just always have Google+ right there ready to use without going to a new site or opening a new tab/window. I always have Google Reader open (always…on EVERY computer) and it’s there too. I can super quickly share a link from Google Reader without even changing tabs. It’s wonderful. I can also see comments and such from right there as well. I don’t even have to open Google+ to use it or read entire comment threads. This is a huge advantage over Facebook. Plus, I can mute individual comment threads without turning off all notifications. That’s one thing that kills me on Facebook, I comment on something and then I’m stuck getting emails for comments from people I don’t know for days. Now that I’ve typed it out, this might actually be my second favorite thing about Google+ thus far.

I don’t really see Sparks taking off or being of use to me. I don’t need a machine picking out articles for me when I’ve got 300+ sites added to my Google Reader. I have more than enough to read already. But the hang outs thing is pretty neat. I like the idea of just saying “yo, I’m sitting here, who wants to chill?” It works pretty well in my limited use of it. It could already be the best group video chat out there. And it’s got a great feature that shows the person talking as a larger video and everyone else as smaller ones. When someone else starts to talk, it moves them to the big one. Automatically. In a three person chat last night, it worked almost flawlessly. Very impressive. It doesn’t sound like much, but it actually helps a lot and makes it feel more like you’re actually talking with a group of people and turning your head to face the person that is speaking. I never ever use video chat, but I might actually use this.

Another thing that’s going to help Google’s chances here is that they’re actually making apps for mobile OSes besides Android and not just relying on delivering via the browser. This killed Buzz for me. I don’t want to load an app, go to a page, and then start using something. It works, but it’s not a good user experience. On my phone, I don’t want to always have to be waiting for UI stuff to download, it’s much more efficient to only download the content. I also don’t want two steps before seeing content when I could have just one.

Only time will tell if Google+ takes off. There are a lot of features that Google needs to build out still and who knows how they’ll handle things like fan pages and music (a tie-in to Google Music could go along way against iCloud). I’d like to see people start using this and I hope Google builds and adds features quickly. I’ve only been using it for about 12 hours, but I already like it a lot and feel like it’s got a lot of potential to best Facebook.

I want to do a full review of Google Music Beta, but I’m not there yet. I just got my invite the other day and kicked off the upload a little more than 36 hours ago. About 4500 songs have been uploaded so far.

The upload process is kind of annoying if you have a lot of music. I installed the music manager program on the Windows virtual machine I already keep running on my Linux server (I need the VM for Audiogalaxy [which apparently relaunched last year as a site that streams your music from your computer to any device. It's solid] and AirVideo). Once installed and pointed to my music, the application started scanning through to see what I have. The music manager found about 66,000 songs and immediately started uploading. The uploads seem to go fairly quick and songs immediately appear in Google Music for your listening pleasure. The problem is that the music manager made no indication of the 20,000 song limit at this point, it just started uploading.

After a while (and after the application crashed and I restarted it), the music manager eventually said that all my songs would not be uploaded because there were too many. That wouldn’t really be a problem considering that Google is very upfront about the 20,000 song limit. The problem is that you don’t get any control over what doesn’t get uploaded. It seems as though the folders are being chosen somewhat at random.

So what it seems like happens is that Google will upload 20k songs and then stop. In Google Music, you can delete stuff, so I would presume I could do that and then it would upload more. But this means I’m uploading stuff I don’t want and working against my Comcast data cap for music that I don’t really want in the cloud (if it means I can’t have other things; I would put it all there if I could).

The music manager does let you add multiple folders to upload and watch, so I could just go through and pick out the artists/albums I want and add them, but that would be an ungodly tedious affair and annoying to do. To be honest, the way Google should handle this is to have the music manager application first upload a list of songs available to be uploaded and let me choose what to upload. If I have less than 20,000 songs, I could just tell it to upload everything in one click, but if I have more, I would be presented with my entire library and I could choose what I wanted. And the I would be able to change this at any time (on the fly). If I decide that I don’t want a certain album and do want something else, I could go in, uncheck that album and check the other one. Then the manager would upload the new album and the old one would be deleted (from Google Music). This could all be done from the browser without me needing to choose specific folders on my computer.

As far as playing music goes, I haven’t done much yet. I have an iPhone, so there’s no app to use for it, but it seems that Google Music does work in mobile Safari on both my iPhone and iPad which is neat. I won’t get to take advantage of the caching, but I can still control the music using the controls in the multitasking tray thing.

I’ll post more about it later.

Just a little while ago, Google announced that Chrome OS will finally be coming to devices that users can buy. Starting in the middle of next month, Acer and Samsung will have Chromebooks, as they’re called, on the market for between $350 and $500. You can read all about it, if you care.

If you’ve read my Google Cr-48 review from a few months back, you’d remember that I actually kind of liked it at the time. Since then, the novelty wore off…a lot. The notebook has become very good at collecting dust except for some occasional times when I needed to look up some stuff while working on my Amahi server and my MacBook Pro and iPad were downstairs. The problem became that the computer was just too sluggish and cumbersome to use for anything more than some web browsing. Even when it came down to typing up some blog entries, I preferred my MacBook Pro because of the better keyboard, more responsive user experience, and better trackpad.

I still consider it to be a sleek little machine and it has come in handy a couple times, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t present anything to compete against my iPad or a full-blown laptop. It’s really only worth owning because it was free and is sort of a collector’s item. The iPad, or any tablet, I would presume, provides a much better browsing and reading experience. I can get more comfortable while browsing and reading on my iPad. I can lay in bed, get comfortable on the couch, you name it. It’s more like reading a magazine or book. Just great. The iPad is also smoother and faster. The iPad only loses to the Cr-48 on the typing front. Typing on an iPad is not really as bad as you would think, but a “real” keyboard is always better. But that brings us to something else, if I want to type something longer than a few sentences, I’m going to grab my MacBook Pro. It’s got a better keyboard and having different applications and sites on the screen at the same time in windows makes it easier to reference other things. The Cr-48 simply can’t compete here. And unfortunately for the Cr-48, there’s no room in between, for me at least. I don’t want anything between a tablet and a notebook. And that is very different from where the iPad comes into play. I did want something between my iPhone and my notebook.

And to just drive one more stake into the Cr-48, it’s not even that useful as a cheap computer that I can bring on the go. For some, it will be, but not me. People who blog a lot or just do any kind of writing a lot may find a Chromebook better than a laptop because it’s lighter and still offers a decent typing experience. But for me, when I’m on the go and away from home and not wanting to bring a full-blown laptop, I want my iPad. I can dump RAW files from my DSLR to an iPad. At 22mb each and numbering in the hundreds or thousands (depending on how long of a time-frame we’re talking about), the RAW files are too much for a Chromebook with limited local storage and it’s not very realistic to be instantly uploading gigabytes of data to the cloud. Not only does this take too long, but any mobile datacaps would be destroyed before I finished. At home, when I want to work with my photos and edit them, a Cr-48 is useless. I need my MacBook Pro’s power. Hell, even the iPad can get me started with the use of Photosmith or Filterstorm Pro. An iPad 2 can actually edit RAW files, you can’t do that in the cloud yet. It’s just not feasible. Even my cheap netbook beats the Cr-48 here, it’s got local storage and costs the same as one of these Chromebooks will.  But, computers are for way more than photography stuff so this whole paragraph doesn’t apply to everyone, I’ll admit that.

Okay, so about these new Chromebooks in general and off of the specifics of the Cr-48. They should be a bit faster, but they still have Intel Atom processors and if owning a Cr-48 and a netbook has taught me anything, it’s that even newer generation ones are going to be slow. There’s just no way around it, they’re underpowered chips. And at the price points that they’ll be hitting, they’re a bit too expensive to beat out tablets. If they came in at $200, I think they’d have a fighting chance, but for the general consumer, $350-500 for a web-only computer that is barely useful when not connected to the internet is a bit much. There is some offline capability, but it’s only a few Google apps right now and it won’t be able to compete with tablet apps.

When comparing a $500 Chromebook to a $500 tablet, the tablet wins…not to say that there isn’t merit to having a physical keyboard, but the tablet is more versatile, I think. I even think a $500 tablet is a better buy than a $350 Chromebook. The tablet will almost certainly get a lot more use. A netbook is a better deal and those things are crappy as hell (I really have a vendetta against them after owning one). Besides, once you hit $500, you’re into the territory of good enough cheap laptops that the Chromebook has another competitor that it can’t really beat unless you need that instant on functionality. You can run Google Chrome on any Mac, Windows, or Linux laptop so you could just use that. A Chromebook really doesn’t offer much over a netbook or full-blown laptop, you actually get less.

If you change the price to $200, the Chromebook beats tablets, netbooks, and full-blown laptops, but that’s not reality.

Where I think a Chromebook can compete is in schools and in businesses. People’s data not getting lost when the Chromebook is lost/damaged (it’s all in the cloud), just about zero maintenance, and prices starting at $20/month and $28/month, respectively, are big pluses, but that monthly cost isn’t for the general public (they just get the lumpsum price). These are places where you need a physical keyboard too. A tablet won’t quite be up to task for writing lots of emails or school papers. I just don’t think this same thing applies for a general consumer though, I think the tablet wins.

So to sum it all up, I do like the idea of Chrome OS, but I think it came to fruition too late. Mobile OSes are good enough now where a web-only OS doesn’t have much of a place outside of a few specific sectors. For the money and what it offers, I just don’t think there’s a bit market for the Chromebook. There’s not enough of a place between the tablet and the full-blown notebook to fit in.

I think there was a time when it looked like the future of the computer was something like Chrome OS, but that was 3-5 years ago. Since then, an alternate reality actually happened where data does live in the cloud, but is accessed through apps as much as it is through the browser. The app may prove to be a temporary idea that will die out in a few years once HTML5 and such completely invades the internet, but right now, it’s king. Google Chrome and Chrome OS do bring apps to the table in the form of webapps that can be “installed,” but they’re not nearly as good offline (or even online) as iOS and Android apps. The form factor of computers and the way we interact with them is changing too. Out is the mouse and keyboard, in is touch. Touch isn’t a trend. Touching things on the screen to interact with them in the future of computing and the Chromebook isn’t that. The Chromebook really has one foot in the present and future (the cloud) and the other in the past (traditional form factor). Chrome OS may have touch support built-in/coming, but it won’t be able to touch Android and iOS. Those who need more than touch and actually need a keyboard and mouse/trackpad often need more than just a browser window in front of them too. Bloggers and writers may be the one exception to that, but I don’t think that’s a big enough segment to sustain the Chromebook, it’s only real hope is schools and business and they’re not a given either.

Oh, and don’t forget, Google has said that they think Chrome OS and Android will eventually merge into one project. So what kind of future are you buying into? Just get an Android tablet now and save yourself. Or get an iPad and get a tablet that’s actually useful today (I think Android tablets need another generation or two before they can really compete with iPads).

Classified under cool things that can happen that I wasn’t expecting would be having Google send me a free laptop, but that’s what happened last week.

How I got it

As most have heard, Google has made their own operating system called Chrome OS and they put together a pilot program to get it into the hands of people while they continue the development. To get one, you can apply for the pilot program by filling out a form and hoping for the best. They are trying to get all kinds of people in the program, but I’m not sure of the specifics of how they’re choosing people. I filled out the form almost right after it went up and was hopeful, but I figured it was a long shot especially since when I answered the question asking why I’d be a unique user, I kind of gave an honest response and said that I wouldn’t be.

I expected that to be the end of it, I hadn’t heard anything so I figured I wasn’t chosen. This is where the surprise comes in, Friday night when my fiancée and I got home from our company’s holiday party, there was a box sitting on the front step. It was addressed to me which was confusing to both of us as I wasn’t waiting on anything, all the Christmas gifts that I had ordered had come already. The box was completely unmarked and the return address didn’t help–it certainly didn’t say Google on it. I was a little afraid, to be honest. I made my fiancée face the other way just in case it was something I ordered for her and had forgotten about. As I opened the box, I actually leaned back a bit, I had a slight fear that it was going to blow up in my face. I really had no idea what it was. Had I been completely sober at the time and not still a little buzzed from the party, I may have been even more careful.

When I got the box open, there was just another box inside. This box wasn’t labeled either. There was a nice graphic on one side that gave no real indication of what was inside and a lithium-ion battery warning sticker on the other side. No other markings. I was still a bit confused so I again opened the box in front of me with extreme caution and still expecting a face full of explosion. As I opened this box, the first thing that I saw was the battery and as I pulled that out, I saw a sheet of paper and the computer itself. At this point, I knew exactly what it was, but I was in utter shock. I couldn’t believe I had been selected for the pilot program. I also couldn’t believe that Google had sent me a free computer and didn’t even send me an email to let me know I had been selected–apparently, most people did get an email though.

Even though I was tired and a bit buzzed still, I immediately powered the machine on and started playing with it. How could I not? It was neat and my fiancée quickly grabbed it from me and logged in with her account too.

Awesome.

The review

How could I not review this thing, right? So where to start? Hmm…I’ll start with the outside. If you’ve read any reviews of this thing so far, you’ll know that the aesthetics are view simple. The computer is all matte black and entirely unbranded. It looks amazing, sort of reminiscent of the black MacBook. There are no fingerprints left as you handle it. It’s wonderful. Appearance-wise, computers don’t get much nicer than this. I truly love it. One thing that you would never even think about until you’re presented with an unbranded computer is that if you’re not paying attention, it’s easy to try to open it from the wrong side. When you pick it up, it’s not immediately apparent which side the hinge is on. I’ve made this mistake a few times.

It’s a bit bigger than my Asus Eee 1101HA which makes sense since it’s a 12″ screen, but it’s comparable in weight. The machine doesn’t feel featherlight, it’s got a small bit of heft to it, but it also feels quite solid. I don’t feel like I’m going to break it…very unlike my Eee. Very nice. When you open up the lid, everything still feels pretty solid. When you close it, the top snaps down with authority and stays closed. Again, very nice. While it’s open, you’re presented with a spacious, yet simplified chiclet-style keyboard. I like the keys and this thing is a pleasure to type on–I’m actually typing this review on it. The keys feel solid under your fingers and don’t have too much travel, but there is enough to keep you from guessing if you’ve actually pressed them or not. I like typing on this thing much more than my Eee.

The most interesting part of the keyboard is the layout of the keys. Obviously, a Windows key isn’t needed so that’s gone. This frees up some room so the Ctrl and Alt keys are a bit wider. Along the top, the function keys are history and that’s okay because they don’t really have a lot of use on this machine, but they are replaced with keys for refresh, screen brightness, volume, etc. You’re not losing anything here. The caps lock key has been replaced with a search key which doesn’t bother me in the least, despite some groaning from the internet about this. The last major change to what’d you’d expect is one that bothers me though, there are no end, home, or delete keys. On my MacBook Pro, I’m used to being able to do fn-Delete for a right delete, but there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent here that I’ve found yet. Home and end can be achieved by holding down Ctrl and Alt while pressing up or down. It gets the job done, but there’s still a bit of oddball functionality loss (like being able to go to the beginning or end of a page) and annoyance here for someone who uses home and end a lot. Your average user won’t miss it, but being a software developer, I’m very used to needing to move around text quickly without the mouse. It’s become part of my everyday computer-usage. The only other negative about the keyboard is the lack of backlit keys. Though, to be fair, this isn’t really something that would be expected for this level of hardware, but it goes a long way when it’s there.

(Update: I actually took a look at the help article for all the keyboard shortcuts and the situation is much better than I originally feared. I think I’m good here…mostly.)

The trackpad is somewhat of a mixed bag. I like the feel of it under my fingers, it’s large and responsive. Not only does it feel much better than my Eee’s trackpad, but the two-finger scrolling is quick and responds well. It’s smooth instead of jerky like on the Eee. My experience here seems to be very different from most other reviews. Maybe it’s just that my expectations were for a similar experience to my Eee and not to my MacBook Pro. Anyway, you get a couple other gestures like pinch to zoom and you can do a two finger tap to right click–this doesn’t work very consistently. Unfortunately, you don’t get any three finger swipes like I’m in love with on my Mac for moving back and forward in a browser. Also, the trackpad gets very finicky when trying to select text. The best method I’ve found is to click the pad down and drag your finger while still holding it down. It works, but my hands never want to do that, they try to instead use a method more similar to what MacBooks allow–you can get away with using two fingers.

The 12″ screen is the right size and gives more resolution than a standard netbook, much nicer than the smaller screens on my most netbooks. My Eee is an 11″ model, but the extra inch makes a big difference here. Definitely worth the larger physical footprint. Additionally, it’s got a matte finish and is plenty bright. Unfortunately, that’s all I can say on the positive side for the screen. The contrast on this thing is horrible and I can’t find any adjustments for it yet. Everything feels very washed out and the vertical viewing angles are crap. There’s a very small angle that looks acceptable. Horizontal angles are quite a bit better though.

There are just a handful of ports on this thing. For what you’re going to use a cloud-only OS for, one USB port will get you by and the SD slot is nice to have, but of limited use to me since I’ll won’t be able to do any photo editing on this. Most people will be able to pop in a memory card from their camera and immediately start dumping to Picasa, Facebook, and Flickr. The machine comes with a VGA port instead of an HDMI port which is slightly disappointing. Granted, the machine doesn’t have the power to really drive HD content, but an HDMI port is a bit more useful these days than a VGA one is.

I haven’t been able to fully test the battery life yet, but it seems pretty solid. I think getting close to eight hours of life out of this thing could be a reality. The power brick is nice and small like you’d expect for a netbook so that’s nice, but I haven’t really kept it plugged in while using yet. Now that I think about it, it hasn’t seen AC power in over 48 hours and I’ve probably put four or five hours of use in since that charge. I’ve got 31% left right now. That kind of life puts the Cr-48 in the very good category. It’s more than my year and a half old MacBook Pro gets, but less than my fiancée’s 2010 MacBook and my Eee. Of course, those aren’t all fair comparisons.

Update: I forgot to mention the speakers, they’re located on the sides of the machine and get decently loud. They acceptably clear, but as would be expected, lack any bass at all.

Alright, so let’s get to the actual using it part. The Google Cr-48 is unlike using any other computer. It’s the first machine built for Google Chrome OS which attempts to make a pretty big statement in favor of computing solely in the cloud. If you think about it, most of your computer use is probably in your browser anyway and what isn’t can be moved there pretty easily.

When you turn the computer on, a cold boot takes about 15 seconds. This is the kind of thing anyone can get used to. If this is your first time using the machine, you are presented with a screen to login with your Google account. Once you put in your email and password, the computer snaps your picture and you’re off to gallivant around the internet as you please. If you use Google Chrome as your browser already and have the sync turned on, everything pulls down for you. You get your extensions, bookmarks, etc. From here on out, everything you do on the machine is in the cloud. If you use someone else’s Chrome OS machine, you’ll pick up right where you left off when you log in. When you first experience this, it’s pretty remarkable. You’ll love it.

When you close the lid, the computer almost instantly goes to sleep and when you open it back up, it’s on by the time you have the screen in position for use. You’ll love this too.

After you’re logged in, you get a Google Chrome window. That’s it. All you get is a web browser. The idea is that webapps can do everything for you. For most people, Google’s assumption (prayer, really) isn’t completely unattainable. Since Chrome OS really just lets you use a web browser, let’s talk about that. If you’re a Google Chrome (the browser) user already, you’ll feel right at home.

The browsing experience on the Cr-48 is very good. It has to be, this is all it has. Just about everything about the browsing experience is a smoother than on my Eee, but significantly slower than on my MacBook Pro or my Windows 7 desktop. There are some caveats though, flash performance leaves a bit to be desired. An Intel Atom with integrated graphics just doesn’t cut it. Low resolution videos play fine, but even 480p videos start to get a little choppy. Something that I think is a little odd is that YouTube videos don’t give you the option of 720p or 1080p. The options just don’t show. In reality, this is probably a smart move on Google’s front because I don’t think this machine would handle it very well, but therein lies the problem. Google thinks and wants the future of computing to be entirely in the cloud and media is continuing to become a bigger and bigger part of the online experience. On top of that, HD is becoming more and more important…even for video on the web. How could Google ship a machine to show off their new OS that doesn’t play HD video from their own video site? Granted, this is not a production machine–you will never be able to buy it, it’s sort of like beta hardware–, the OS is still in beta and not at v1.0 yet, and the OS is built on Linux and Adobe’s Linux support for Flash is awful.  Still, to not even allow HD video is pretty crappy. This needs to get fixed before Chrome OS can be sold with production machines.

That’s all I’ve got for now, I’m still fiddling around with this thing and trying to find some hidden stuff. I haven’t tried developer mode yet, but I’ll get to that soon.

The verdict

Factoring in that this is not production hardware and this is a beta OS still, I like the Cr-48 a lot. There are some glaring flaws here, but the overall experience is very positive. I like what Google is doing here, but like many (even former Google employee and the creator of Google) have questioned, what is the long term plan for Google Chrome OS? How will it not get swallowed up by Android which offers more and could pull off what Chrome OS offers.

For a lot of people, I think this could be all they need, but it could never be a main computer for me. My music and video libraries are way too large to be moved into the cloud in the foreseeable future and without being able to play media over my network here without setting up my server to stream via the web, Chrome OS is leaving me high and dry. Additionally, I practically live and breathe Adobe Lightroom and without being able to run that, I need something else. No webapp anytime soon will be able to take over editing of RAW files. They’re just too big to to work with via the web right now. Javascript and the internet as a whole have come a long way, but not that far. Unfortunately, this not only prevents the Cr-48 from making it as my main computer, but also prevents the it from being able to replace my Eee.

For 95% of netbook users, this could do it for them, but I need my Lightroom. I’m not going to lie, Adobe Lightroom on a netbook isn’t the best experience, but it runs and with a little patience can get you by while you’re away from home. It’s nice to have a cheap computer that I don’t need to worry about yet can still run Lightroom while I’m on vacation. When I’m away, I can dump a days’ worth of photos on there and at least start tagging them and even get some of the basic editing done. If I could do that on here, my Eee would go up for sale.

The bottom line here is still a very big like. Even though I now have six computers to my name, this one will get a solid amount of use. My MacBook Pro won’t be replaced and my Eee will still come with me when I travel, but this will be nice for browsing on the couch or in bed.

This is a real error message that I just got from Google Chrome…

This is a real error message that I just got from Google Chrome…