Monday, December 13, 2010

The CR-48

I figure I might as well give a brief overview of what I think of this lovely machine.
It's pretty light compared to my brick, coming in at about 3.6 pounds. The CR-48 has a webcam and a microphone that I haven't really been able to test as of yet. It starts up like a dream, taking only a few seconds to turn on and get logged in. It wakes up almost immediately from standby, though lately it's been taking a bit to reconnect to the internet. This can be a problem, since all it does is connect to the internet. Beyond those few extra seconds (which is still faster than all other computers I've come across), it's darn fast, taking about two seconds to go from one page to another. I've tried watching a few shows on Hulu, which play pretty well at the normal size. Fullscreen though was actually worst at first than my normal laptop, but today it seemed fine.
A nice feature is that it comes with the CR-48 is the two years of free Verizon wi-fi access, but only up to 200 MB a month. You can sign up for a paid plan with more usage if this is not enough.
I've had a few issues with the system crashing and restarting frequently, but that's stopped since the first couple of days since I got the computer. Google has been good at fixing issues sent in through the feedback button from what I've seen. Google Talk wasn't really working over the weekend, and it had some issues while I was on the Verizon Mobile Broadband, but isn't hasn't effected me too much.
So far, this has been a good computer for those that are ready to transition to the cloud. Before I got this computer, I thought I was, as I spent most of my time online. However, there have been a few things I miss (my main laptop isn't working at the moment) about being able to go offline. I do tend to be sentimental though...and I know that's part of it. Google Docs is good for basic things, but you can't do very much; you can't even make columns. Eventually, there will need to be apps that are able to compete with things like Microsoft Office and Photoshop in features. For now though, this is fine. It is a prototype after all, and it's a big leap across the chasm to complete internet connection. I would say that one of the best parts of cloud computing so far is the ability to access everything from any computer.

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