An Hour With the Google Cr-48 Chrome Netbook [Chrome Os]

The Chrome Cr-48 netbook might just be a reference design-as in, most fogeys won’t ever have the ability to use it-however it is what Google thinks a Chrome laptop needs to be. And it has some pretty nice touches.

Here are some quick impressions on the hardware and software that we gleaned from about an hour’s worth of usage.

Likey

• Plain matte finish both in and out the lid feels nice-the antithesis of shiny MacBooks
• The trackpad really would not like having two fingers on it instantaneously. It’s not multitouch, but you should use two fingers for right clicking.
• Window switching with Alt+Tab is fast, and looks like switching workspaces (Spaces on OS X)
• Fairly light and fairly thin
• The keyboard keys are separated like MacBook and Envy, so I’m definitely used to typing on it
• No function keys, instead, you’ve gotten actually web-useful keys like back, forward, reload, fullscreen, next window and several other standard laptop keys
• Shutdown and resume really is nearly instant
• The screen doesn’t get incredibly bright, nevertheless it gets bright enough for indoor use
• Gmail calling works! It’s only slightly laggy, and I sound like I’m in a closet, but otherwise, it works

No likey

• It’s definitely still a netbook-there’s an Atom processor inside-so heavy duty computing is out of the question
• YouTube is restricted to 480p, even on 1080p videos. There’s just no approach to select the higher quality
• Hulu is choppy, nonetheless it’s not unwatchable
• Gmail noticeably is slower than on a MacBook Pro
• There’s just one USB port

We’ll be doing more impressions and posts inside the day.

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This post is tagged: function keys, heavy duty, impressions, instant bull, keyboard keys, reference design, two fingers