Coming Soon: Google Chrome OS

The news is out fast, like Chrome fast. Google is making an OS. Not your android type of OS, but rather, it’s an old concept that somehow made it to my unexpected list. And Microsoft need not worry. Their upcoming Windows 7 operating system is still safe.

Well, Google is technically NOT making a new OS. Despite whatever they want to call it, Google’s “OS” is simply their Chrome web browser running on a compressed version of the latest linux kernel.

We’ve seen this before. Asus launched the “instant-on” ExpressGate feature in some of their boxes years ago, and it practically does the same thing. Without booting into the full linux OS, a user can already launch a browser, skype or some other pre-programmed app in about 10 seconds after they hit the power button.

Google, and their revolutionary Chrome browser, with all its improvement in memory and process management, is attempting to do the same and continue on to where ExpressGate has failed to go, i.e. beyond web browsing. With ExpressGate, if I just need to check my mail, I would be fine. However, I usually find myself booting past ExpressGate and continuing to the full OS just so I can do other stuff like work on a spreadsheet or access my calendar.

Google’s Chrome OS eliminates that kind of choice. Like the ExpressGate, boot time is expected to be fast. Unlike ExpressGate, you can do a lot more with Google Chrome such that there will be no need to boot into a separate OS.

Google Gears and Google Labs provides a rich desktop experience within the browser. You have the Google docs for your document or spreadsheet requirements, Gmail for email, and a whole other web apps that you run from, you’ve guessed it, the browser.

And like most good software (read: non-microsoft), it will be open-source. Third-party developers are encouraged to develop rich apps that would run inside the Chrome browser. The possibilities are, in a way, interesting.

Some people would probably appreciate the simplicity. It shares a lot of things in common with a similar platform, the Palm OS: simple, fast, lightweight, fully supported by the community, and functional.

However, in this day and age of ultra fast hardware that comes in ultra small sizes, I wonder if a lightweight OS is still a big plus. Yes, Palm OS was big when Windows CE devices would crawl slowly inside mobile devices. Palm OS lost its luster when faster hardware enabled Windows Mobile to perform faster than Palm.

Personally, I want my netbook in the future loaded with solid state disks, 3 gigs of DDR3 ram and the latest dual core atom processors. And so, while you play flash games on your new Google Chrome OS, I, on the other hand, am happy playing Diablo 3 while taking a dump in the toilet.

If you want to know more about Google Chrome, you may want to check out the Google Chrome comic series.

( Image from Google Chrome’s comic book, licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs )

Windows 8

While Windows 7 is still in the Release Candidate stage, Microsoft has started developing the next version to come out in the next 3 years.

Those familiar with Windows Server 2008 may see this as the better alternative (and successor) to Windows XP. While the base code is still partly Vista, improvements on the allocation of resources and interface were prominent. Windows 8, on the other hand, looks like a totally different animal.

Below is the reported user concept of Windows 8:

Copenhagen User Experience from Copenhagen Concept on Vimeo.

The new interface looks to be more intuitive, but the seemingly required additional learning curve may be a drawback to some. I have no problem with the existing usability issues of Windows XP, only the stability of the platform and it’s vurnerability to attacks. Personally, I’d rather they keep the existing flow and improve on the other aspects of the OS that would make our computing lives easier.

Version 2.0

I’ve been doing tech posts at Techrepublic for a while. Before that, I’ve been a regular at experts-exchange. Nothing mattered more then than tech points and bragging rights.

For some reason, Techrepublic took out the Tech Q&A portion of the site. Sure, the questions are still there, intermingled with the forum discussions, but the Techpoints system are gone.

I went next to MSN spaces for my tech solace. The site’s cms was simple and effective, yet it underwent more changes than I am comfortable with. Plus, blogging about open source on a MS blogspace felt kind of weird.

I’ve been blogging here and there, but mostly personal. Recent developments in the blogosphere, and the resurgence of interesting technologies makes me want to go back to writing.

It’s like what they say: If at first you don’t succeed; call it version 1.0