TechStuff Looks at Chrome OS

it seems, is not without a sense of irony. Very nice, thank you. Okay, So today's topic is an interesting topic, actually, yes, because it's so close to so many things and yet it's not the same as any one of them. Well, I think that came from a Beatles song. No, No, it's a it's chromo, yes, And it has ties to a great many different other technologies and is sort of

a standalone thing. And I think that's why so many people are confused about it, because it seems like a whole bunch of different stuff, but it is its own standalone operating system for computers. Yeah, this is um There are a lot of reasons why this is a confusing topic. For some people. Now, a lot of our listeners have probably been following the development of CHROMOS over the last uh well more than a year now, because Google initially

announced CHROMOS back in two thousand nine. Yes, July seven, two thousand nine, by my reckoning, Yes, that is that's the date I have on this blog post where they

called it. That was titled introducing the Google Chromos uh So Yeah, Google announced this back in two thousand nine, and then essentially the message was that this was going to be a cloud based operating system, it was meant for computers, and that we would start seeing it on machines and around the end of Yes, now as we record this, it is the very end of and indeed we have seen the first computer with this up ring

system uh loaded in as its native OS. But the program itself is still very much in beta mode, which to Google, you know, kind of part for the course. Really,

Google is king of the beta. Yeah, and um, I think it's safe to say, um that I still only speaking for myself personally, I think there there is uh there are some details out there about what chrome os is supposed to be, and I think they're pretty accurate based on the bets that they've released, but I'm not sure that we know all the details enough to be definitive about some parts of it. Like, um, I think I think a lot of the information that's out there

still is more marketing material than it is hardened fast numbers. Right. And there are people out there right now who are using Chromos because as probably the pilot program Google shipped out um, they shipped out notebooks, computer notebooks. Uh. The the technical name for it is the cr DASH for eight UM. And so there are people who applied to be in this pilot program and Google sent some of them these machines with the intent. You know, they specifically said,

use these machines as your primary machine. That's the only reason we're sending this to you, so that you can really give it a test and we can see make sure we iron bugs out and that kind of thing. So it doesn't do them any good if you just you know, use that like once in a while. So they wanted testers who could use it as their primary machine as much as possible. Um, it's interesting, it's actually Chromos. You might hear people talk about how Google it takes

us sort of open approach too. They're operating systems. Chromo S technically is not really an open system. It's based upon source code from chromium OS, which is the open system. Yes. That actually reminds me of macOS ten, which is based upon b s D, but which is an open source system. But again macOS ten itself is closed. I mean it's it's Apple. You kind of expect that from Apple, but um, yeah, it's it's basically a derivative of that is a derivative of BSD, or it builds on bs D and is

its own operating system. And that's similar to what the CHROMOS is. Yeah. Um, also it's uh, it's related to Linux. Yes, the Chromium o S is UM and uh it's important to note too that it is not Android, which is Google's operating system for global devices. Yeah. This this is another point that becomes really confusing for people who aren't really following the store, because you've got the Android platform, which is just now really starting to get some some

identity in the market. Right there are people who know what Android is, um, because of all the different commercials for various phones as well as the tablet devices like the Galaxy Tab. So people know what Android is and they think of that as the Google operating system. So why would Google come out with the Chrome operating system. I've I've actually heard will have tech tournal lests say that this is a bad idea to come out with

a separate operating system just for notebook computers. What I think is funny is that that's what other companies are doing already. Yes, I guess what they're saying is they thought that maybe the era of separate operating systems is slowly coming to an end, and we are going to see a get ready for you, guys, convergence emerge where we see the same operating system used across an entire variety of gadgets, from computers all the way down to

cell phones. Yes, we're not there yet. So perhaps what people thought was that Google would just lead the way and create an operating system that would go across this entire range of hardware, and that way you didn't have to wait for things to converge. Google would just kind of lead the way. That would like like some generation of Android, maybe two or three generations down the line, would be robust enough to be a cloud based operating

system for a computer. That's not what's happened, and Google has essentially said the same thing that other companies have said, which is that mobile devices and computers are two separate things right now, and while we may be heading towards convergence, we're not there yet. So it's it's weird for me to hear people criticize Google for making this decision when other companies have been doing this. I mean, you brought

up Apple. Apple has the Mac os that's for their computer systems, then it has iOS, which is for their mobile systems, which includes the iPad, And of course Microsoft has Windows seven, Windows Mobile seven, which I'm sorry, I'm sorry, You're right, well, it was at one point Windows Mobile I think I think they only got up to six for Windows Mobile, Yes, but then they went to Windows Phone seven, so I'm sorry, Yes, Windows Phone seven, which

again the seven makes it confusing to some people because you know, people are thinking, you know, Windows seven, I know what that is, but Windows Phone seven is different. Now, I would say that all three of them have done a pretty good job making their mobile operating system in

their computer operating system look pretty similar. I should say that the Chromos I haven't really seen, but the Chromos does use the Chrome web browser that is out for Windows, Mac and Linux um as it's one of its major underpinnings because so much of what you do with the chromos or will do with the chromos, is done and the cloud, and we should probably talk about Yeah. So the idea here is it's actually a pretty simple one, and we've talked about it in the past about cloud computing. Chromos.

Chromos is a specific approach to cloud computing. The idea here is that your computer would be a very thin client. It would not need to be particularly powerful in any way, because all it would really need to do is run this operating system, and then the applications would really just be kind of links to online services. So let's say

that you want to use a word processing program. You could use something like Google Docs, where the you know, you, you you have an interface that you use on your computer, but the documents, the word processing, the actual the actual program exists on another computer a server. Um technically actually will.

It will exist on several because of redundancy issues. Redundancy is very important in cloud computing because, of course, if one server goes down and there's no redundancy, you've just lost lots of customer data and customers don't tend to like that very much. No, not really. They seem to be um down on the whole. You just lost all

my stuff, you know. Angle They don't like that. So the idea here is that you would have these applications that you would really just have kind of a window to those by you know, clicking on a little icon and it would open up the interface, but the application itself and all the data there and would exist on other machines. And there's some kind of great applications for this because that means that you aren't tied to a specific machine. Your information would all be tied to your account,

your Google account in this case. So theoretically you could go to any other device that's running the Chrome os, log in as yourself using your Google profile, and then have access to all your information, and then when you logged out, you wouldn't have to worry about that information sticking around the computer because it's not living in that

computer anyway. It's living on computer potentially thousands of miles away. Yeah, there's one of the reasons Google is doing this, at least according to uh the Google Chromos website, which I would encourage you to to go to it's it's Um. They do a lot of explaining in very simple terms. Uh, you know for the non techie related person, which is good because you know that pretty much describes me in some ways. Um. You know it's it's very user friendly

information about what the chromos it's supposed to be. And Uh. One of the things they want to achieve is they want to be very very thin. They don't when they boot up a laptop that has chromos on it. They said they wanted to be something along the lines of seven seconds. Uh. There you're not loading a lot of information uh in the computer like you would with other operating systems. They wanted to be basically the Internet and

everything else is there. They don't want you to have a lot have to worry about things like updates where you have to deal with regular updates. This all happens automatically, uh theoretically without you knowing that it's going on. Again, haven't had the opportunity to try it myself. Another thing they don't want you to have to mess with his drivers. Um. Google print uh is supposed or cloud print as supposed

to take care of printing for you. But you know, if if you have a if you have a particular type of printer, you might have to download a driver for your Windows or Mac or Lenox computer in order to have it, you know, be able to communicate with that device. Um and if you buy a new printer, or if you take your laptop to work and you want to print on the office printer, which is a

completely different kind of printer, you have to deal with that. Well, theoretically, the cloud Print service is supposed to help you take care of that, and they want they don't want you to have to deal with all the little bits and pieces of a traditional operating system. And indeed, um, you know, we actually have an article about about this on the side written by Nathan Chandler, one of my other writers.

Um and uh you know, based on his research, he found that Windows seven takes up to sixty times the disk space of Google's Chromos. That's huge and millions of lines of code. Now, of course, Windows seven will also let you use Windows programs, uh, you know, current Windows programs as well as software developed in the past, and a lot of instances. I mean, it can do a whole lot of things, but it's it's designed for a desktop or a laptop with a robust processor and a

hard drive and possibly disc drives and things. The Google OS isn't really supposed to support all of that. They Google seems to intend it specifically for UH mobile computers, UH laptops and netbooks primarily. And they only are this is another departure I thought was fascinating. They only are installing it in an O e M basis original original equipment manufacturer. If you hear computer people talk about that, that's what they mean. It's installed at the factory. You

don't download it if you want. If you have a computer now and are waiting for Google Cloud or the Chromos to come out, and because you wanted to download it and try it out, they say they're not going to do that. They're only going to pre install it on machines before they leave the factor. Yeah, and uh, I mean in a way you can kind of understand that approach. I mean, for one thing, we're we're talking about an approach to computing that not everyone's going to

be comfortable with. UM. For one thing, gaming is a big issue for some people. They say, well, if I have a cloud based computer, then that really limits what I can do as far as gaming is concerned. And um, I'm sure Google would say, yeah, this really wasn't intended for that. I mean, you could still play all the casual games that you find online, um, you know, like the flash based games and stuff, and you could use other services is to uh stream games to your your

device potentially. Um, but that's you know, it's it's it does limit you as far as that goes. It also limits you, like you were saying, the kind of software you can use. Now again, Google could argue that using web based applications, ultimately the the opportunities are limitless, right that you you would have way more choice and uh and at a variety of price levels of various applications to do the things you need to do, and you

wouldn't have to you know, download anything. You would essentially purchase it. The little icon would pop up on your screen and then just by clicking it, you would go to the cloud based service. Um. That's uh, that's pretty enticing to me, at least for at least for a secondary computer. And I don't know that I could use it as my primary machine. Um well, first of all, it would have to have applications that were there were compatible with the stuff that we you here in the office. UM.

And in some cases that's just not gonna happen. I'd have to have I'd have to have a machine with a more powerful native capabilities and operating system that was computer based, not cloud based. Um. They also uh, but I should point out I feel compelled to point out. Um, you might think that you know it isn't with a new OS. Uh. Well, it's Linux based, so of course there are there are many, many, many Linux based apps,

open source, UM and otherwise. But Google also has its own web store two for uh applications that you might run on the Google OS. So don't think that uh, it would be um uh you know, less likely to have a breadth of software. And of course if it succeeds, more people will develop for it. There will be people who are willing to give it a try. Certainly, UM, I don't know how compatible it is with traditional Linux applications. There may be a lot of them again, things like

images probasit, thing like GEMP or Inkscape. Uh might be too much for an operating system like this, and it would have to be stored in the cloud. Again. UM, but you know, we'll kind of have to see how that goes. But it does. It doesn't seem like hardcore gamers or people who are doing a lot of high end digital editing, video editing, audio editing, people like that. It's not it's not really going to be useful for them, but for people who are doing day to day productivity stuff,

especially stuff that you can do online. It is intended to be an online operating system after it, um, I think I think it may end up being useful and certainly affordable. Yeah, the online operating system is another really important part. We we kind of just assumed that when we started talking about this, but that that's something we should mention. Since this is cloud based and all these

applications are essentially tied to the web. You have to have an Internet connection in order for this computer to actually be useful. It's funny you would mention that I found out something I did not know about the chromos. What's in doing research for this because I had heard some of this material. But uh, Chrome notebooks are actually going to have data plans from Verizon Wireless up to a hundred megabytes of free three G data every month

for two years. Megas free that much. Um. But but then again, these these computers are supposed to have both WiFi and three G. So it's not like three G is the only way you get data. Like for most people, I think WiFi would be the primary way they would get data. So as long as you were in someplace where there was a WiFi hot spot, you'd be good to go. And when you're somewhere where there's not a WiFi hot spot, then hopefully you'd be able to access a three G data network. Yeah. Plus well, I mean

WiFi is faster even three G UM. But yes, if you want to a limitless day pass, uh, you'd be paying per day for three G access or Verizon access. I don't know, Maybe it's orgy by next year, and depending on when this law launches. Um, if you want an additional one gigabyte of information per month, it's twenty dollars. Three gigabytes would be thirty five dollars, and five gigabytes additional would be fifty dollars per month. So that's pretty hefty.

If you're planning on doing a lot of computing on the road, maybe for business that would be worth it because you could probably get reimbursed for that, But if this is for personal use, that may not be Uh, that may not be the best option for you. Yeah, but I mean if you if you're able to click in on WiFi networks, like if you've got WiFi hotspots or you know, you're mainly using this around your home or office, it's not that's not going to be an issue.

You can just use the WiFi to get access to the data and you don't have to worry about incurring fees, you know, going over your cap, unless, of course, your I s P has a cap for your just your regular Internet usage. Some some peas do, and some of the caps are I don't know. Relatively, it depends on who upon whom you ask. Um. I've heard one person sayifty gigabyte cap per month is low, yeah, and for me,

two gigabytes is more than enough. But then she was specifically talking about being able to back up a full computer hard drive to the cloud. I think you wouldn't be able to do that more than once a month. If it were, you know, a really big hard drive and you were using a cloud based backup system, then you could only do it once or maybe not even once,

depending on the size of your hard drive. Now I can't imagine doing that, um, But then it's because I don't tend to use the online data services for backing up my hard drive. It's funny you would say that, because I would think with the with Google's reputation of massive redundancy, and by redundancy if you're not familiar with that term, we mean Google servers have lots and lots

of other servers with the same information on them. So if one of them breaks, basically Google is losing nothing because it's been the company backs up its own equipment. So I would imagine that if you had an account and had Google Chromos on your operating system, your information would all be backed up automatically by Google. And that is one of the things that they have have said that. Um, they're they're very strong on privacy. UM, they're very concerned

with encrypting your information while it's on their servers. UM and sand boxing basically keeping viruses at in in a h quarantine quarantined environment, uh in order to prevent them from infecting the machines and infecting your information, um, you know, to the point where it becomes uh um corrupted, prevent anything from happening to it. Um you know they're they're they're talking those points up, So I would imagine it

would be pretty safe. That the thing is cloud computing has a long running stigma for a lot of people that because that information is on you know, a computer or even multiple computers out there somewhere where they don't know where it is, it concerns them that someone could break in and and gain access to that information, possibly copy it, uh, sell it to people for for money, and who knows what all else. And you've got your

sensitive information on there. Um Yes, the company, I'm sure we'll do its best to protect that information, but it's still causes people concerned. And I think that's why you see Google saying, hey, look it's all encrypted, it's all safe, it's all backed up. You know, no, nothing to worry about here. It's a it's a There two sides to

that story. One side is that companies, big companies like Google, we'll be able to afford and design much tighter security measures than your average user is going to have access to. And most I'm gonna say most users don't aren't nearly as secure as they need to be. You know, they they have poor password protection. A lot of them are using open networks, although I'm seeing fewer cases of that.

Now I'm seeing more people actually secure their wireless networks, which is nice, um, But I mean, it's just that people don't tend to practice very strong security measures. So you can say, well, Google is going to use state of the art security, so that's a good thing. However, Google is also a huge company and therefore, by virtue of being a big company is a big target. Each individual user out there using the Internet is not a

huge target. Now that that you could still fall prey to scams or phishing attempts, that kind of thing, but it's not Most of us don't have a target on our backs. You know, we aren't walking around with with hackers looking to get access specifically to our machine. They want access to machines. They don't care who it happens to be, right, So you could argue, well, Google's better protected,

but it's also a more empting targets. So you got to weigh both of those things against one another, and then you say, well, our Google security measure is going to be strong enough so that it doesn't matter that Google is a bigger target um or you know, it also depends on what you use your computer for. If you're not using your computer to do a lot of sensitive information kind of stuff. Like if you're not doing

a lot of online shopping or online banking. Um, if you're not, you know, posting secret messages to that gal you like who happens to be dating the really huge football player and you don't want the football player finding out about it, that kind of stuff. Um, if you're not doing any of that, then maybe these aren't even

concerns for you. But if you do tend to put uh, like if you do tend to shop online, or you do online banking, or you do you know, you you you do things like you manage benefits or medical records or anything like that online, it becomes a concern. Um, there are other concerns to you. I mean, like there's always a concern of well, if I lose connection to the Internet for some reason, then I lose all access

to all my data. So let's say that there's some massive failure in WiFi and three G service, which at this point you're thinking, well, I probably have other things to worry about. But if if there were such a problem, then you would not be able to access your information anymore unless you were able to store at least some of it locally to your computer, whereas if you had your own computer, assuming that you still had power, you'd

be able to access that. I don't know that what good it's gonna do at that point, with you know, the world apparently coming to an end around you, at least digitally speaking. But um, it's one of those things that people they kind of react to this idea of well, there could something could go wrong and I would no

longer be able to get to the things that are mine. Um. And part of that I think is also just a sense of ownership, like when when your data rests on someone else's machine, it almost feels like you don't own it, you know, so it becomes and depending upon the way service agreements are worded, sometimes you don't own that at least you know, if those agreements were to hold up

in court. Um, we haven't really seen that play out to any extent, like someone come challenging a a uh website or service saying okay, well, I know I uploaded my photos to your site, but that doesn't mean you own them. We'd have to see that kind of played out all the way through to find out, you know what the courts have to say about that. But I mean, these are those issues around cloud computing. It's existed since cloud computing really started up as an idea, and they

have not really all been resolved yet. It's still i would say, cloud computing still pretty young concept. Yeah. Yeah, And it's funny too. When we started talking about this, I I started thinking specifically about Google's compe Titian unwittingly helping it because I would say, probably most people aren't really aware that there is a Google Chrome OS. UM. You know, I think it's out there, but because it hasn't actually been released, UM, it's not really on a

lot of people's radar. Now. Microsoft has currently has a uh cloud um ad campaign going on right now talking about the benefits of cloud computing and how you can use Windows to access information that is stored in the cloud. And I think it's kind of funny because right now Google's marketing legwork is all being done by it's arguably

biggest competition, UM. Because once Microsoft educates people about this, when Google's Chrome OS is released, UM, they're Google is not going to have nearly as much work to do explain to to the layman what UH cloud computing is and the benefits of using it. They're gonna be able to say this is cloud computing Google style, and and you know you've already you already know what this is. Now here's how we do it, and it's going to

be faster and better with the Chromos. And I started thinking about, wow, you know what, this is completely coincidental, I guess, because Microsoft wouldn't necessarily want to promote Google's new operating system. But this has come out in the last month or two, the ads that I've seen uh here late in so I thought about that and thought, you know what, that's that's kind of ironic. And I wonder if they're going to be regretting having taught people

with the cloud is now. On the other hand, they've got a head start, um, you know, for using cloud computing as a marketing tool. But I don't think it's going to take Google much longer to get the Chromos out the door. And we'll see what happens then. Yeah, it's interesting because, um, one other thing I wanted to mention something something that published just recently as of the recording of this put guess anyway, was an interview on Business Insider with Paul Buchite, and I have no idea

if I said his last name correctly or not. B U c h h E I t uh. He was an early employee of Google. Yeah, he was one of the first twenty five employees. I think something along those lines. He was also the guy who was essentially behind Gmail. That was his big project, and he left Google. Um. He worked with Facebook for a while then left that. But he had some interesting things to say about Google recently to Business Insider, and one of the things he

said was he expected Chromos to fail. Yeah, and he attributed that not to any inherent flaw with Chromos, but rather because the Android operating system has gathered so much steam that it's that's going to to cannibalize the Chromos operating system. And people are going to say, well, so the question we made at the very beginning, why should I get Chromos when Android is already out there? Yeah? Yeah,

Well they are they are designed for different devices. There are people who think that mac os ten and iOS are going to merge um and I think there are some similarities there, but I think there is a benefit to keeping them separate, as we were talking about before, because the iOS will run on devices that just simply cannot run the macOS, and the mac OS is far more robust and supports a far greater range of applications um and the iOS can ever support, but it needs

a faster and more heavy duty processor operate and that would be uh, that would be sort of similar to this situation. But the Chromos isn't really designed to run on you know, a desktop, heavy duty machine, a pro level machine. Well, and and not all the apps on Android are cloud based either. A lot of them exist on top of the hardware of the actual handheld device. So so it's not exactly the same approach as Chromos

in the first place. And I'm not sure that the Android experience would translate well to a computer, um like a like a laptop or or netbook or anything like that. It's it's meant for a different kind of of computing. And I think, you know, Apple's really proven, uh that there are two different ways to use these kind of devices.

And I say that because the success of the iPad, because Steve Jobs recognize that there there's a mobile way of browsing the Internet and using a computing device that is a lot different from the computer approach, which I would argue, is why there are you know, why the iPad uses iOS instead of a version of macOS because it you know, it's designed to do computing in a different way. So we'll see if the chromos is going to make an impact. I mean it's early days yet,

the beta program just launched. As of the recording of this pod, guest Um, I actually applied for it. I have not received my CR forty eight yet. Um. Actually, I have no idea if they would even pick me. I would love to get my hands on one just to try it out and you know, see see exactly you know what I can do and what I can't do,

and and really take it for a spin. Plus, I think that the it's kind of got an appealing bare bones designed to that laptop, right, And that's one of the other elements that we didn't really address here, um, but we can. We can just mention it very quickly

before we wrap up. One of the reasons why a cloud based operating system may be really attractive is that you don't have to have such advanced hardware, so you can have cheaper computers because you know, you don't have to have a computer capable of running of really you know, processor heavy operating system, so you don't need the most advanced processor, you don't need all those uh you know, if your processor is not gonna be running super hot,

you're not gonna need great ventilation and fans. I mean, you start to really cut down on the costs for the devices, which can in theory make computing even cheaper. Well. Um, and another thing that that I wanted to address really quickly is and then we didn't really cover the whole thing. It's really strange. It's Linux based, but everything runs essentially

out of the Chrome browser. The Chrome browser is a building block of the Chromos And I'm still interested to see again, if you were accepted to the program, the beta program, I would like to see how you're supposed to run other applications on that platform. If everything runs essentially through the the Chrome browser, how other applications factor

into that. And I'm used to things like Google Docs or Aviary or you know, Photoshop dot com, things that you can do where they are applications, but they are essentially on the web already. If you're installing theoretically installing other applications into your Chromos experience, how does that work exactly? Do you do you go to a website or does it run alongside the browser. I'm interested to see how

that works. It's it's difficult for me to understand without actually having an opportunity to try it out for myself, and I think a lot of our our listeners would probably agree it's it's kind of a different concept and it might require a hands on approach to really get it. I'm pretty sure a few of them already have this computer actually, based upon emails that I've received. Well, they need to tell us what's going on. Yeah, yeah, you

guys gotta hook hook us up. You know we we do not have the bat line directly into Google headquarters, Yes, Commissioner, not anymore. Yeah, yeah, that was a couple of years ago when we had that. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So that it all communicated in high pitched squeaks beyond the

range of human hearing. That was a little irritating. Beyond that, it was awesome, And they expected us to know what was going on down They need to start listening to our podcast more often and they would know you have no idea what's going on? All right, Well, with that,

let's wrap this up. This was another fun episode. If you guys have any suggestions for topics, or you want to chime in on a discussion about chromos and cloud computing, let us know on Facebook and Twitter are handle There is text stuff h s W or you can shoot us an email. That address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.

To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The house stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you