Update your Chromebook operating system. Google Cr 4. 8 Chrome Netbook Full Review. Though the official release of its cloud based Chrome OS is months away, Google has begun a massive pilot program, offering specially chosen end users, Google employees, and journalists their own prototype Chrome netbooks. Known as the Cr 4. Chromium 4. 8, these particular 1. Chrome systems when they launch by mid 2. So whats it like living in a browser only PCEditors Note Because the Cr 4. Design of the Cr 4. The Cr 4. 8 wont be available to consumers and Google has already stated the systems its partners launch in mid 2. However, there are several things about this test system we found interesting, because they may inspire the final products. First, we were amazed at how Mac. Book like the Cr 4. The chassis is rounded and shaped like a last generation plastic Mac. Book, its keyboard has the same size, shape, and nearly identical layout to a Mac. Books, and even the hinge, which sites in the middle of the chassis, takes its cues from a Mac. Book. We love the black, soft touch rubberized material that is used throughout the chassis and wish more products were made out of it. Laying your wrists on the soft touch palmrest is a pleasant experience. At 1. 1. 8 x 8. 6 x 0. Cr 4. 8 is a very comfortable size for your bag or holding on your lap, but its 3. The Chromebook is a new, faster computer. It starts in seconds, and offers thousands of apps. It has builtin virus protection, and backs up your stuff in the cloud. Chrome OS, Googles newly announced computer operating system, is coming this autumn and promises to revolutionize netbooks and other underpowered machines. Keyboard and Touchpad. The very isolated keyboard layout provided good tactile feedback and key placement that makes typing on it a breeze. However, you will notice that the keyboard has no function keys, but instead has dedicated keys for forward, back, refresh, full screen mode, change windows, brightness up, brightness down, mute, audio up, audio down, and power onoff. The caps lock key has been replaced a search button, because Google says it wants to discourage all caps typing. There are numerous keyboard shortcuts which match those you would find in the Windows version of Chrome. How To Install Google Os On Netbook Review 2016These include such as CTRL H to see the history, CTRL W to close a tab, and CTRL to zoom in and out. You can see a complete list of these by hitting CTRL ALT The touchpad does not have built in buttons, but like many notebooks these days, is itself a button. In our experience most clickpad designs, apart from the Mac. Books, are unpleasant to use particularly if you like to navigate with one finger and click with another. The Cr 4. 8s clickpad alternated between making our cursor jump and stopping it mid movement. Pinch to zoom didnt work either. As we expected, right clicking doesnt do anything. To finish the review, we had to plug in an external mouse. Screen. The 1. 2. The screens matte surface allowed it to provide really strong viewing angles to the left and right. Ports. There are very few ports on the device. On the right side is an SD card reader, an audio out jack, and a USB port. On the left is a VGA port. As stated above, storage devices and memory cards work for uploading files to the cloud, but do nothing else. We were able to attach both a wired and a wireless mouse to the USB port and both worked pretty well. Set Up. True to Googles word, initial set up takes only a minute or so. After you power on the Cr 4. Internet connection by selecting a Wi Fi network, then youre asked to agree to the Google EULA, and finally asked to login with a Google account and given the option to take your picture with the webcam so the picture can accompany your login. When it came to logging in, we noticed two interesting flaws. First, the system did not recognize any Google account we used with a username that did not end in gmail. When we tried to login with our laptopmag. Google Apps user account, or with another Yahoo address thats registered with Google, the system said our account could not be located. If you dont have a valid Gmail account already, you hit a bit of a wall at the login prompt, because theres no way to create one during setup. If you dont already have a valid Google account, your best bet is to walk over to your nearest non Chrome OS device, visit Google. Boot Up. Google promised that its operating system would boot very quickly and our tests indicate that, while it is quick to start up, the Cr 4. From hitting the power button to reaching the login prompt was about 1. However, then you must select your user account it shows you a list of profiles and enter your password or click guest and wait a few more seconds for everything to appear. All told, with typing and clicking, this process takes about another 1. The latest Mac. Book Airs let you start working in 1. User Interface. The first thing youll notice when you enter Chrome OS is that theres no desktop, no Start Menu or dock, and no task bar. All you see is the Chrome browser, which opens with a list of your installed web apps and Chrome extensions and two menus that list Most visited and Recently closed sites. By default, the preloaded apps are Get Started a set of instructions, Entanglement a puzzle game, Poppit a casual game where you pop balloons, Gmail, You. Tube, Google Maps, Google Talk, You. Tube, and Web Store, which allows you to install more apps. None of these apps actually lives on the PC theyre all either bookmarks to URLs you could just visit by typing into the address bar or extensions that also live on the web. You can get thousands more apps by going to Googles web store, though theres no way to simply add your own custom shortcuts to the empty tab page. However, if you have bookmarks, youll see a few in a bar above the apps. In the upper right corner of the screen sit the system clock, wireless bars, and a battery indicator. If you have your Cr 4. You cant do a lot to customize the look and feel of the OS, but you can download Chrome themes from Googles web store, which will change both the color of the tabs and address bar area and the background that appears in new tabs. Because theres no desktop behind it, you cant minimize, maximize, or resize the browser window, nor can you view two browser windows next to each other. You can drag tabs around and, should you hit Ctrl N or click a link that spawns a new window, youll be transported to another screen where that window will also take up the full area. Theres no compelling need to create new windows rather than tabs, but should you wish to work with multiple windows, you can switch back and forth between them by either hitting ALT Tab or the change windows button on the keyboard. While you are in one browser window there is no indicator to let you know that other windows exist. Even when you change windows, you are simply shuffled off to the next window, rather than given a menu that shows you how many windows are open and what they contain. Pop Ups The Good KindThough you cant have multiple full browser windows on the screen at the same time, small mini windows can appear on top of the main one. The best example of a mini window like this is Google Talk, which can float around the bottom of the screen while you visit other web sites in the main window. Another example we encountered is the player window from Napster. Interestingly, you cant drag these mini windows up on the screen but you can slide them around horizontally or drag them down until they sink below the bottom of the screen, so only a tiny non descript gray line sits at the bottom of your display to remind you theres a window buried there somewhere. Google needs to do a much better job of handling these mini windows as it updates Chrome OS. Settings. Chrome OS offers very few configuration options right now for the Cr 4. Among the many things you cant do is view the system properties to see exactly what hardware the computer has, so if you need to know how much free space is left on the systems internal storage or what type of CPU you have, youre out of luck. Nor can you control the power settings. On battery, the screen dims after 2 minutes and goes black after 3 minutes and theres nothing you can do about it. You can adjust the brightness in broad strokes by hitting the up and down brightness buttons at the top of the keyboard, but theres no way to fine tune the level in the control panel. By clicking on the clock, you can change the time and date. Clicking on the wireless bars launches a pulldown menu with a list of available wireless networks and the option to disable enable Wi FI and cellular connections. Clicking on the battery shows you the percentage and estimated time remaining, but doesnt give you any options.
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November 2017
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