Savouring Google Chrome OS

The Chrome OS from Google is one of the most anticipated of software applications that is set to come out this year. Thanks to this great article on Lifehacker, I have finally managed to savour a preliminary version of the Chrome OS.


With an install of VirtualBox, another cool tool which will be covered here soon and a customized packaging of Chrome OS, I had Chrome OS running on a Pentium 4.

In a nutshell, VirtualBox is a free utility from Sun, application that can run one operating system(the guest OS) within another operating system (the host) as if it was an application of the latter operating system.

In my configuration, I had Chrme OS running inside Ubuntu Jaunty. The disadvantage of this type of installation is that the guest OS runs much more slowly. Because of this setback, I could not experience one of the best features of Chrome OS, its speed.

However, I did get to test out Chrome and many of its features.Here are my thoughts:

If you, like me are used to a desktop, with a cool background image that houses many icons inside it, you may initially get disappointed.

As soon as you login into Chrome, you are presented with a familiar utility, a maximised Chrome Browser. You must make a paradigm shift in getting used to the idea that the browser is your desktop and all the applications you'll need are accessible through the browser. These applications include Google docs, Gmail and other Google utilities.

There are also image links to other tools like Facebook and Twitter. In previous posts, we have looked at several cloud operating systems(See Links below.) These are operating systems that reside in remote(possibly distributed) locations and accessible through a browser.

At first glance, Chrome may resemble them. However, unlike the other cloud operating systems we have seen before, Chrome OS uses HTML5, the newest version of the language of the web. While the other cloud operating systems make little use of resources on the local machine, Chrome uses HTML 5 to make use of resources like the memory and processor on the local computer.

Chrome OS is expected to hit netbooks later this year. HTC is working with Google to release a Chrome Tablet.

Below is a promotional video from Google on the philosophy behind Chrome OS>

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Best of 2009 software Technologies: Part 3

Firefox 3.5
Any list of great software that came out of last year would be incomplete without the inclusion of Firefox 3.5. Firefox 3.5 has become the world's leading browser, stealing the thunder from
IE.

Release 3.5 has made Firefox to beat by including a slew of awesome features. Notable among them are

• The awesome bar: This is the top address bar which provides intelligent suggestions as you type in an address or heading. Having used this feature, it would be hard for me to go back to other browsers. 
  
• HTML5 support: Firefox supports HTML5 and as a result, video becomes part of the page. This means that Firefox can display videos on HTML5 compatible web pages without asking you to download flash.
• Private browsing and forget the site features: Firefox features a private browsing mode to hide your identity while browsing sites, similar to Chrome's incognito mode.It also has a 'Forget the site' feature that allow you to delete a site from your browsing history.
• Session Restoration: The ability to restor a session when Firefox crashes.

Firefox has proved that it is the clear leader in the browser world. All other browsers have a lot of catching up to do to take away users from Firefox.

Opera

Opera 10.10 is another HTML5 compatible browser. One unique feature it has called 'Unite' differentiates it from other browsers. Using this feature, you can stream music from any laptop or desktop to another machine on the network running a browser, also running Opera.

Google Chrome Browser for Linux and Mac


 In 2008, Google released the  Chrome browser. After observing the follies of Netscape. IE and Firefox, Google produced a browser that runs each of its tasks on a separate thread. This means that if a tab in the browser is stuck in the midst of connecting to a site, the user simply closes the respective tab and does not have to restart the browser. The interface for the browser is intuitive and minimal. This and other features including speed made Chrome a nifty browser. See my previous post on the features of Chrome.

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