Chrome OS

Google's Chrome project aka Chromium runs for their Chrome Browser and Chrome OS. Loving its browser, I thought of checking out the OS. 

Downloading image
Google Chrome OS, is available only via their partnered OEM's hardware. Hence to try out, how it looks and what's the experience, I started googling around. Chromium OS & Google Chrome OS, share same code base with an exception of later having additional packages to ensure better experience on its partnered OEMs hardware. Chromium OS can be downloaded, compiled & executed. Avoiding all that tricky steps, I looked for readily available image. 


Though not much of information available, but whatever available; all pointed towards hexxeh. They seem to be checking out latest version of Chrome OS available on public domain, build it & release a installable image for end consumers. 


Installation

• I started with its Vanila variant. 
• Downloaded & copied image to the USB drive through image writer. 
• Plugged USB in to my old HP Laptop (running with 512 MB RAM, Intel Pentium Dual Core processor). 
• Booted computer from USB. Saw Google Chrome's logo with text 'Chromium'. Got excited !!!
  NOTE: Google Chrome OS has green/yellow/red logo, while chromium OS has blue/bluer/bluest logo. 
• After few minutes, saw initial screen asking for KeyBoard Language, Network connectivity.
  NOTE: Unless, I connected ethernet cable, I could not proceed. For some reason WiFi option was not available. 
• Next step to configure Google Account. I gave my existing Google account credentials and it started syncing contents.
  NOTE: For security reasons, secondary encryption password is prompted before sync can be performed (which can be found in google account dashboard).
• Upon syncing & configuring, I was asked to select my logic profile picture (It also pulled up my Google+ profile image). 

Experience

Applications installed on Chrome Browser (via Chrome browser App Store) popped up as my applications on the machine. All most all this applications works in browser & hence they worked here equally well. I do not have that many applications installed to have detail analysis on the same. 

File Manager: File manager is part of the browser, where all files are visible. UX looks very similar to Google docs listing all files in a collection. 

Printer: Printer on cloud. I haven't tried it, so can't comment. 

Settings: Could see Ethernet, WiFi, Keyboard, trackpad settings. Again not as a separate application, but all under Chrome Browser page. 

Other Info: I could see my computers battery status in bottom right corner. Could not see other hardware or similar details. 

Summary

Honestly, as this was not an official Google Chrome's OS image; but a similar variant - It gave me a basic feel of what the OS is all about. An operating system, with a home page and all applications hosted (or embedded) in a browser. Data pulled from my cloud services and processed locally (where-ever applicable). Certain services have support for offline data availability to ensure work continuity especially when no or limited internet connectivity. 

Google's official Chrome OS, has pre-bundled extended package like Adobe Flash, Adobe PDF, Google Talk client, 3G Cellular support, etc; which makes the entire OS better. 

For users, who can get their all major work done on a browser (Mail, Doc processing, Financial, Image & Video Processing), it seems to be a good option. But hold on - Do one really needs to buy a new hardware for this? May not be... We all use browser in our regular laptop / tablets. Then why a new hardware? May be a trimmed version of hardware like a tablet or ultra books seems to be a good fit.  

I'll definitely look forward to use ChromeBook soon.