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Dublin City University adopts Chromebooks -- time to go streaking through the quad!
Instead of handing out cheap mugs (or iPads... or iPods) and sending students on their merry way, administrators at Dublin City University will be showering incoming freshmen with free Chromebooks -- in doing so, it'll become the first European higher-education institution to adopt the device. As you probably recall, Google's always-connected laptops have gone through various incarnations throughout the years, but they've always included a dash of WiFi or 3G and a pinch of hasty boot -- intentionally ditching local storage for the cloud. The Google Chromebooks for Education partnership is said to support DCU's commitment to make 80 percent of its classes partially or fully online by 2013, allowing coeds to stay in their Scooby Doo pajamas or attend class from Pi Kappa Delta HQ. Now, if only the dining hall supported online ordering...
Chromebooks get 3G connectivity via Three UK (update)
Long before Google outed Samsung's Series 5 and Acer's Chromebook, we'd already heard that Verizon would provide unlimited 3G coverage to the Internet giant's netbooks, but our friends across the Atlantic still didn't have a data carrier until yesterday. We don't have a lot in the way of details for now, but Three UK has stepped forward as the Chromebooks' carrier of choice for 3G data in the United Kingdom. The company is decidedly tight-lipped otherwise, but says they'll have more details in the "next few weeks." Update: Well, it looks like Three has already let the cat out of the bag on this one. According to the UK's Chrome OS site, British Chromebook users will receive a free SIM card, offering 3GB of 3G coverage for three months -- see what they did there? After that, users can choose to go contract-free with a number of different pay-as-you-go plans that range from a 500MB day pass for £3 to a 7GB one-month pass for £25. More details can be found at the Chrome link below. [Thanks, Ross & Jamie W]
Flash working poorly on your Google Cr-48? Adobe's working on it
Yep, that Flash error up there is one of many we got today on our Cr-48s. On top of that, as you may have read in our in-depth preview, we've been experiencing incredibly sluggish Flash performance, including choppy playback of YouTube and Hulu videos. It's certainly not a good situation, but Adobe's aware of it and promising that hope is on the way. Adobe's Senior Director of Engineer Paul Betlem has put up a post regarding the matter on the company's very own Flash Player blog, and says that " In terms of Chrome notebooks specifically... video performance in particular is the primary area for improvement." He also goes on to promise that the updates will be seamless as the Flash plug-ins are integrated directly into the self-updating operating system. That sure sounds good to us, but in the meantime, we'll be waiting for these Flash errors and stuttering 480p videos to disappear -- or, you know, for HTML 5 to take over.
This is the Google Chrome OS netbook keyboard
It's just a Chrome OS sorta day, isn't it? To catch you up here, we told you earlier that Google is planning to announce its own Chrome OS netbook this coming Tuesday, and well, now we're peering at a supposed picture of that very machine's keyboard. We don't know all that much about the rest of the netbook -- we've heard from multiple sources that it's powered by an Intel Atom processor -- but the image above was taken from an Inventec (as in, the ODM making the netbook) presentation. We'll call a spade a spade here and say it looks like your average chiclet keyboard, but there are obviously some interesting differences. Over on the left side of the panel you'll see a "search" key subbing for a Caps Lock key, and up above, the function row has forward / back keys as well as Window, full screen, and "configuration" keys. Wait, but couldn't this be any old netbook keyboard? Sure it could, we've got an exclusive photo of Acer's Chrome netbook (that "ZGA" model) which happens to have the same exact keyboard layout. You can check out the picture of that one after the break, and you'll see it looks extremely similar to this shot. We should also mention that the tipster that sent the above photo in claims the Google-branded Chrome OS netbook will be announced next Tuesday, but won't be on sale until December 14. Looks like it's going to be a very interesting Tuesday morning!
Sources: Google-branded Chrome OS netbook to launch on December 7th
The headline pretty much reveals the brunt of it, but indeed, it looks like next week Google is going to start talking about how its Chrome operating system is coming along. Multiple sources have told us that Google will be holding some sort of event on Tuesday, December 7th -- we're not sure if it'll be a live event, a webcast, or something else entirely -- and that the shindig will see the launch of that Google-branded Chrome OS netbook we've been hearing about. Again, we've heard that the Atom-powered laptop isn't going to be a mass market device -- there will only be around 65,000 units available to Google's closest "friends and family" -- and that the Cloud-based OS is still very much in a beta, non-consumer-friendly state. It's a bit odd that we still haven't received an invite to this planned event since it's purportedly days away, not to mention it conflicts with the All Things D: Dive Into Mobile Event, but at the time of publishing this post we had yet to hear back from Google's PR team with an official comment. Of course, this all lines up with TechCrunch's report that Google will be launching its Chrome Web / App Store very soon, as well as yesterday's launch of Chrome 8, which supports those aforementioned Chrome apps. (Companies like TweetDeck have already started demoing their browser apps.) Don't forget that those apps are going to be a large part of the OS, so it would make sense for Google to talk about 'em in tandem. The pieces sure do seem to be fitting together quite well, and while we still have lots of unanswered questions, we're feeling confident that we'll be getting some official answers on all this Chrome-ness very soon. Update: AllThingsD has also heard a similar December 7th launch date of the Chrome Web Store. The evidence seems to be mounting here... Update 2: Well, there you have it, Google just sent out invites for its December 7th Chrome event! We will be there! Image note: As we said last time, that picture above is just our own mockup of what a Chromebook may look like. We even added a Chrome key!
Chrome OS consumer launch pushed to 2011, Google-branded Chromebook could still arrive this year
It's almost time to eat turkey and then jet out to Best Buy to be trampled by mad shoppers. Oh yes, the holiday season is just about here, which according to a few posts we've written in the last year means that the Chrome OS netbooks should be as well. Well, it turns out that the Google OS-powered laptops aren't going to arrive this year, or at least not in the way we thought they would. That doesn't mean Chrome OS isn't going to see a bit of an unveil this year, but major manufacturers, including Acer and HP, won't have its own Chromebooks ready before 2011. How do we know? Acer's Jim Wong told us during the company's global press conference that Acer will be launching its netbook based on the browser operating system during the "consumer launch" of the OS next year, while Google has its own agenda and will be doing something "in December." We didn't get to ask if that Acer netbook is in fact the "ZGA" netbook we've seen popping up in bug reports, but our guess is that it will be something quite similar. So, what does Google have brewing? You remember the Google-branded Chrome OS netbook that we heard about? Well, according to a few of our very own sources, that's exactly what's going to happen. We don't have exact timing details, but we have been told by a few that Google will launch its own Chrome-book a la the Nexus One for "friends and family." As the operating system is still in a beta or preview form, the netbook would be aimed at the development / early adopter community. Specs-wise we don't know all that much, but we've heard that it will be powered by an Intel Atom Pine Trail processor and, just as Digitimes reported, that 75,000 units are being manufactured by Taiwan ODM Inventec. We should mention that the aforementioned Acer "ZGA" was said to be used internally as a "dogfood device" at Google, but we believe this Google-branded device to be entirely different. Inventec, Intel, and Google wouldn't comment on the hardware rumor, but Google did tell us that it would "have more details to share later this year." By our count, that leaves 'em with just about 37 days to spill the beans! Note: The picture above is just our creative interpretation of what a Chromebook may look like -- don't come crying to us when the actual device looks a lot prettier.
