Google OS

[J!SH!]

google final made an operating system!

but i think theyve missed something. or stumbled across something big.

it takes 7 seconds to boot, then it instantly loads.
but theres nothing on your computer! its all on the web, so when you save something it saves on the web! if you want to write something, its on the web!
basicly is google chrome.....and thats it. so everything on your computer was stripped away and only the browser remains.

ok good concept! most people use the web now anyhow and they dont need a normal computer they only want the browser! but what if you got internet problems, oh your computer dosent work! and how much downloads would you use! cause your downloading just turning it on!
"oh good my 120gb downloads has refreshed! let me just turn on my computer, oh im capped again"
theres an application page, apple, i mean google thought of it all by themselves but even that uses your downloads
no saving your songs on the computer, you have to stream everything! even pictures and videos.
good idea but you need the computer just as much as the internet.
i knew google would make an OS but i didnt realise it would be this bad.

judge for yourself
Chrome OS, original name

[Dustwave]

Originally Posted by J!SH!

but i think theyve missed something.

No actually, i think you did. Like the market they are aiming this at.

Originally Posted by J!SH!

basicly is google chrome.....and thats it. so everything on your computer was stripped away and only the browser remains.

Ever noticed that thing in windows called explorer.exe? This isn't all that different from windows.

Originally Posted by J!SH!

most people use the web now anyhow and they dont need a normal computer they only want the browser! but what if you got internet problems, oh your computer dosent work!

So what exactly is the problem? If there is no internet there is no point in turning on the computer in the first place if all you do is surf the internet. Plus, this is 2010...i dunno about yours but my internet connection 99.99% stable unless i mess it up within my house.

Originally Posted by J!SH!

and how much downloads would you use! cause your downloading just turning it on!
"oh good my 120gb downloads has refreshed! let me just turn on my computer, oh im capped again"

Why would it download 120gb? It'll stream only what you need. And download cap? Do those things still exist?

Originally Posted by J!SH!

theres an application page, apple, i mean google thought of it all by themselves

What does apple have to do with this? Every operating system with a graphical user interface that i can think of has it.

Originally Posted by J!SH!

good idea but you need the computer just as much as the internet.

Not the people this is aimed at.

Originally Posted by J!SH!

i knew google would make an OS but i didnt realise it would be this bad.

Bad? I assume you mean this good. We'll have to wait and see whether the practice can live up to the theory, but the concept is brilliant. Maybe if you had taken the time to even just read up to the second sentence of Google's press release you'd understand.

[DJ_Serg]

Cloud-computing is a good idea, but terrible in practice at least right now. Connection goes out and your entire company is screwed and it does happen. This is probably going to work for home users. Businesses... maybe later

[PhineasFreak]

any big corporate LAN is pretty much cloud-computing these days no? seems to work fine as a concept...

[J!SH!]

Originally Posted by PhineasFreak

seems to work fine as a concept...

i agree in concept this is a good idea, but sooner or later everyone is gonna want things on thier computer, wheter it be songs pictures or playlists, they are gonna want to do something that this restricts you from doing

[HudsonHawk]

Remember that Chromium is designed for netbooks, portable little devices that cost less than amazon kindle and have just enough memory to run a web browser. But yes, optional local storage would have been an icing on the cake. But have no fear, Chromium is open source, so your wish may be granted.

[Dustwave]

Originally Posted by DJ_Serg

Cloud-computing is a good idea, but terrible in practice at least right now.

How is it terrible in practice? It's essentially not very different from a mainframe and clients setup...which is a method that has been tried and tested for many years and is used by almost every company in the world with a network worth mentioning. I even have it in my home.

Originally Posted by DJ_Serg

Connection goes out and your entire company is screwed and it does happen.

True, but most of the clients of the company i used to work for, and the company itself, had many systems that relied on off-location mainframes or datacenters. But in 3,5 years i've only once seen a connection failure that caused an entire company to stop dead in it's tracks. (That one was giant btw, Vodafone Netherlands, Germany and Italy share a data center in Germany and that had some sort of catastrophic failure, meaning that ALL cellphone data of the 70+ million customers in those countries went unregistered for the duration of the connection problems, and thus wasn't charged...many millions of revenue lost, happy customers though lol). That was about as big of a failure as it can possibly get, but it could just as well have struck a system that is not that big of a deal. I consider it a risk worth taking given the advantages that come with it...no system is risk free afterall.

Originally Posted by DJ_Serg

This is probably going to work for home users. Businesses... maybe later

Agreed, but google knows that too...they're pretty specific as to who this is aimed at.

[HudsonHawk]

Originally Posted by Dustwave

Agreed, but google knows that too...they're pretty specific as to who this is aimed at.

Indeed, this product is designed for personal use on a secondary device in business or home environment alike. If you do not have 2 computers (2nd being a netbook running chromim os) at home or in your office you cant and you shouldn't use chromium.

[J!SH!]

this reminds me of a virtual desktop.

all your doing is logging into the internet servers and you computer is just a terminal.
but this would be awesome if it lead into the Gpad (Google pad) cause apple are advertising the internet usage on their ipad and heres an operating system where that is it the main function.
all google need to do is make a tablet pc like product and have google os on it. because whats the one thing everyone wants from products like this? quick bootup and siple controls, well you cant get much faster then 7 seconds and you cant get much more simple then the one browser on your screen and thats it!
and it would be the first thing google sells!

[DJ Stev]

lol this product is not for me. my internet suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuux. and i do alot of stuff off the internet too. such as listen to music, play around in reason, write papers. see if i got a paper thats due thenext morning for a class and its saved on the internet and u have internet troubles (somehow this always happens when important papers are due) ur stuck. so it would be nice o have ur stuff saved off the internet. this also would probably keep ur files safer from being hacked??

idk not for me lol

[DJ_Serg]

Originally Posted by Dustwave

How is it terrible in practice? It's essentially not very different from a mainframe and clients setup...which is a method that has been tried and tested for many years and is used by almost every company in the world with a network worth mentioning. I even have it in my home.

True, but most of the clients of the company i used to work for, and the company itself, had many systems that relied on off-location mainframes or datacenters. But in 3,5 years i've only once seen a connection failure that caused an entire company to stop dead in it's tracks. (That one was giant btw, Vodafone Netherlands, Germany and Italy share a data center in Germany and that had some sort of catastrophic failure, meaning that ALL cellphone data of the 70+ million customers in those countries went unregistered for the duration of the connection problems, and thus wasn't charged...many millions of revenue lost, happy customers though lol). That was about as big of a failure as it can possibly get, but it could just as well have struck a system that is not that big of a deal. I consider it a risk worth taking given the advantages that come with it...no system is risk free afterall.

Agreed, but google knows that too...they're pretty specific as to who this is aimed at.

I'm happy you had great experience with it. My view isn't from the standpoint of a few cloud-computing services i've dealt with. It's the ethical issues that will make this a really really bad option, at least for now.

Guess what it is... ** Privacy and security **
When you're talking about huge corporations like Google releasing an OS with, potentially millions of users in the long run, they'd have to be using some god-like security (and not only them but the services they provide access to), which we will not have any time soon for 2 reasons:

1. Lack of technology. We're getting there with quantum computing though, where security could potentially be impenetrable due to the possibility that your algorithms can rely on naturally occurring and truly unreproducible factors. How long until we get quantum machines mass-produced and publicly available?

2. Cloud-computing needs reliability. The problem is there are very few people in software industry who can provide it. It is a tremendous cluster-f0ck. There are more morons working in this field than there are flipping burgers at McDonalds. Software developers are not engineers. If they f0ck up, they will never be prosecuted like other professionals. It's so bad that you actually don't need a degree to practice. You can be straight out of high school. How do you feel about a bunch of high school nerds providing you with a secure credit card storage facility for your personal online shopping? Even worse - your medical records. Pick up a few books on 'software engineering ethics' and read about some of the major screw-ups of software firms which were killing people due to low quality software made for high-end hardware. Maybe you'll be surprised to know that the first thing they tell you in a software engineering course in CS is that most software projects either fail or become unmaintainable, low quality nightmare with a few poor souls who happen to buy the license. The bottom line is that cloud computing is going to be hazardous technology unless the people who build it are skilled professionals who provide quality service and responsibility for their actions much like doctors and engineers.

I'm not saying this will never work, but as someone with a degree in computer science and who develops software, i just don't see this happening soon. Maybe for personal computing for now, which is what i think Google is aiming for.

[Dustwave]

Originally Posted by J!SH!

all google need to do is make a tablet pc like product and have google os on it

Maybe if you did a few seconds of research you'd find out they thought of that a long time ago.

Originally Posted by DJ_Serg

Maybe for personal computing for now, which is what i think Google is aiming for.

That IS the entire point... They are making it very clear who they are aiming this at.

Of course security is always an issue. But i think if you are the kind of user Chrome OS is aimed at, you probably won't have anything on it that is more important/valuable than the stuff you have in your e-mail...which, if you are in the Chrome OS target group, you probably already trust google/gmail with.

[Thirst]

I can't see this as the future. It seems to have benfits for certain people, but the idea itself isn't all that great. Portability will likely be the marketing focus.
They should have made the whole OS like a torrent client. Where everyone signed up to it is p2ping, and there's no complete files in any one location. The configuration itself would be a blow for hackers, and reliable, fast and secure for users. Especially if every file was duplicated and diffused to a point that brought the chance of 'file offline' down to near zero. You could also use it for some kind of referential system that identifies infected files. And if its possible, just have the mainframe software floating around. Run it like a money laundering business lol.
It would need a high level of automation. And how would it interact with complete files on the internet, browsing and modifying stuff? It reminds me that its only dealing with 'personal files', itself a muddy distinction at times. But whats all the fuss about chrome if its just your own files anyway? I'd get a virtual desktop like j!sh! said.

[ij70_17as]

Originally Posted by Dustwave

How is it terrible in practice? It's essentially not very different from a mainframe and clients setup...which is a method that has been tried and tested for many years and is used by almost every company in the world with a network worth mentioning. I even have it in my home.

I agree with DJ Serg. Dusty, I think you completely misunderstood what Serg meant by practical cloud computing at this time. The current level of infrastructure in US is not good enough to support the cloud computing at this time. For example, AT&T spent whole summer of 2009 upgrading their infrastructure in large urban markets, they spend hundreds of millions and there is more to do for them, they know it and plan on doing more upgrading. That is just AT&T. All the major phone companies are either doing or planning upgrades, 3G, 4G and who knows what else afterward. Yes, we got the technology, but we do not have infrastructure to take advantage of the technology and that is what makes cloud computing less than practical at this time. Ask me again in 20 years and I will probably answer to you from my cloud device (what ever it might be).

[J!SH!]

ij gun boy is right!
the world isnt ready for cloud computing yet! maybe if you had uber fast net the was wired into an optical fibre cable then yea it would be good, but then youve missed the target audience.

well at least not in Australia

[Dustwave]

Originally Posted by ij70_17as

I agree with DJ Serg. Dusty, I think you completely misunderstood what Serg meant by practical cloud computing at this time.

If that's what he meant, i misunderstood indeed. However, then i still don't agree.

Originally Posted by ij70_17as

The current level of infrastructure in US is not good enough to support the cloud computing at this time. For example, AT&T spent whole summer of 2009 upgrading their infrastructure in large urban markets, they spend hundreds of millions and there is more to do for them, they know it and plan on doing more upgrading. That is just AT&T. All the major phone companies are either doing or planning upgrades, 3G, 4G and who knows what else afterward. Yes, we got the technology, but we do not have infrastructure to take advantage of the technology and that is what makes cloud computing less than practical at this time. Ask me again in 20 years and I will probably answer to you from my cloud device (what ever it might be).

Is the infrastructure really that bad in the US? I mean, how often does your connection cut out? I don't have any useful first hand experience with internet in the US other than during my vacations there, but i find it hard to imagine it's in such a bad shape that this wouldn't be doable. Even if the average connection in the US were to cut out 3 times as often or even 10 times as often as it does here, that still would be negligible. And as for commercially offered connection speeds...from what i can tell from the websites of american ISPs, the packages offered are plenty fast unless you work with large files all the time. And of course the world is bigger than the US

Perhaps a better question is, does your connection have to be perfect? Keep in mind that we're not talking about switching the entire country's computer network to this at once or something...it's just the first steps of such a system, that (at first) will primarily be used for less important stuff.

Also, i've been reading up a bit more on Chrome OS and connection problems...and as it turns out it DOES have an offline mode. It's not perfect, but through HTML5 and Google Gears the system stays functional. And of course you can still access files on local devices like USB drives.

Originally Posted by J!SH!

maybe if you had uber fast net the was wired into an optical fibre cable then yea it would be good, but then youve missed the target audience.

O'rly? Do you have any idea what you're talking about, at all? I mean, fibre? Fibre is fun but unless you're running a data center or a submarine transatlantic communications line you can't tell me you need it. I have a 120mbit connection at home, and you know what, that's not even close to the limit for copper wire. The current Euro-DOCSIS 3 standard supports up to 340mbit...yes on the very copper cables that are already in the ground. Do you realise how fast 340mbit is? Just to give an example...at that speed it takes less than 2 minutes to download a full length, full size DVD (that's 4.7gb).

Better question is, do you need that kind of speed? I really really doubt it. I'm even wondering why i upgraded my connection from 30mbit to 120mbit...sure it's just 15 euro a month more so why not...but really, why? Even 30mbit is so fast that for today's home usage you rarely really need it unless you're constantly downloading movies and games or something. I think you are massively overestimating the amount of data Chrome OS will need to send and receive. Chrome OS is all about being as light and fast as possible...surely they're do everything they can to absolutely minimize the amount of data that needs to be downloaded for the system itself.

[Thirst]

Originally Posted by Dustwave

Fibre is fun but unless you're running a data center or a submarine transatlantic communications line you can't tell me you need it. I have a 120mbit connection at home, and you know what, that's not even close to the limit for copper wire. The current Euro-DOCSIS 3 standard supports up to 340mbit...yes on the very copper cables that are already in the ground. Do you realise how fast 340mbit is? Just to give an example...at that speed it takes less than 2 minutes to download a full length, full size DVD (that's 4.7gb).

You need it in the UK if you want download speeds over ~300k/s. The copper wire network is jam packed.

[Dustwave]

Originally Posted by Thirst

You need it in the UK if you want download speeds over ~300k/s. The copper wire network is jam packed.

I recently had a discussion with around a dozen people from all over the UK about internet connections (started about connection problems in a game). They all have stable connections of at least 8mbit of actually measured speed, most of them reached more. Not extremely fast, but according to them it's stable, and in reality plenty fast for most purposes. Though the two people who always have the connection problems are both on 50mbit fibre optic connections in London through Virgin Media lol... But either way, the UK is pretty much the bottom end when it comes to internet in west European countries.

[Thirst]

Aside from new businesses with little startup capital, I can't see why anyone would bother.

Originally Posted by Dustwave

I recently had a discussion with around a dozen people from all over the UK about internet connections (started about connection problems in a game). They all have stable connections of at least 8mbit of actually measured speed, most of them reached more. Not extremely fast, but according to them it's stable, and in reality plenty fast for most purposes. Though the two people who always have the connection problems are both on 50mbit fibre optic connections in London through Virgin Media lol... But either way, the UK is pretty much the bottom end when it comes to internet in west European countries.

If they're getting stable 8mbit on copper wire then they must be paying for an advertised 10mbit at least. Paying for 8mbit (a common figure for last 1-2 years) and getting 8mbit is unheard of, never mind getting it consistently. Mind you, im on 20mbit Virgin Media fibre optic and at most see half the advertised speed, if its like 4 in the morning.

[Dustwave]

Yeah they did say they usually didn't reach the advertised speeds, but in my experience that happens everywhere to certain a degree. For me too, though not that extreme. Before my upgrade (advertised was 30mbit) i usually got between 28 and 30, now (advertised is 120mbit) i get between 116 and 120. But for actual real world usage it's pretty much pointless... Only once have i maxed out the full 120mbit on stuff other than speedtests, and at that time i was still intentionally trying to max it out by just downloading every movie i could find (for the nitpickers, that was legal downloading).