Cr48 a Gift from Google

Yesterday afternoon an unexpected package arrived by UPS from Google, inside was the cr48. After installing the battery and attaching the power cord. I lifted the lid of the lap top and the Chrome logo appeared I entered my Google account information to register. I then watched a brief tutorial. After the tutorial the chrome browser appears. This is your world on this computer, there is no desktop , no file system everything you do is through the browser. There are a couple of problems I ran into right away and I wanted to discuss them in this post.

The first problem I ran into was how I was going to upload a picture I took of it with my Iphone, on my Mac I either email it too myself and then drag it too my desktop or I add them too my Iphoto library when I sync. There is a usb port on the cr48, but it doesn’t recognize the Iphone (or any other hard drive) so copying directly from the Iphone isn’t an option. I discovered that for photos on the Iphone email is the best option. Just email the picture to yourself, I emailed from my Mobileme account to my Gmail account. Once you get the email hit alt right click on the image then hit save as. The image will go into your download folder. At that point you go to your favorite photo website such as Flickr or Picassa hit the upload button and go to /chronos/user/downloads and choose the appropriate file. Then follow the instructions on the website. If you need to edit the photo, Picnik work well. If you took the picture with a digital camera that has an standard SD card, the cr48 does have an SD card slot and will recognize any standard SD card. Again go to your favorite photo site hit upload then locate your SD card and the image and proceed as instructed by the site. Both these methods should work with any file type as long as you are uploading the file to the appropriate site

Beside the usb port and SD card slot there is a headphone jack on the right and side of the computer. On the left hand side there is a VGA port. However when I first attached a VGA cable to it and to an external monitor nothing happened. Most sites I went to said the port was dead, however I was convinced that it should work, I was right I found the answer at Search Engine Land blog . Once you attach the secondary monitor, hit ctrl and the key that looks like a couple of panels one on top of another. Then the second monitor works, however the laptop monitor goes black, so there is no way to use the lap top monitor and an external monitor at the same time. all indications are that Google is in no hurry to fix this.

I do like the computer I am still in the process of learning how things work. I do think that it needs some work before it will be ready for the general public, especially people who don’t use Google Chrome as their everyday browsers. This is where the Google app store shines. However deciding which application is best for what you want is some of a hit or miss operation right now, the only thing to go by are the ratings and what Google recommends. Ratings can be gamed and the top rated application may not be the best one for you. I plan to do post in the future, about the various applications that I use and why, but for now I am still exploring. I very happy I received this early Christmas present from Google and look forward to sending in my thoughts to them.