If there's one thing I think about at this time of the year, it's out with the old, in with the new. I have taken this opportunity in the past to migrate the website to a new hosting provider and this year is no different. I decided I like Weebly better than Posterous. The trick is going to be moving all the old blog entries here. I will also be migrating TYP over to this as it has an awesome theme for that which you'll see later. Today has been spent getting the theme ready etc. here so that things can be switched over. Stay tuned for the new things coming. Bye 2010, hello 2011!
 
 
A bit off-topic for the Cr-48 but I just had to write about this. I have used Gmail since shortly after it went into beta and I've always liked it, since day 1. I like it for various reasons and lately those reasons have expanded. It started with the fact that I could store and search through all my email in the cloud due to the hefty storage capacity. It grew with a good spam filter and integrated IM services. Today I noticed more the advanced spam handling and security features. I actually had someone access my account maliciously. They tried sending an email to 15 people in my address book (thankfully all old email addresses) and guess what, the spam filter caught the spam on the way out and bounced them back to me before they even hit the rest of the internet. I was prompted to change passwords and I looked to see where my account was accessed from (Ukraine) and disabled IMAP for now since that's how they accessed my account. The drawback is I can't sync it to my iPod as easily but I'm willing to give up that feature for now to keep things secure. I was very happy with the ability of Gmail to keep me and my friends from being attacked. THANK YOU GOOGLE! These are but a few reasons I like Gmail. If you don't have Gmail, I highly recommend getting it.
 
 
When I first got the Cr-48 (also known as the Mario, no , I'm not kidding) I liked the size of it. It's bigger than my ASUS EeePC 900 (12" LCD vs. 9" LCD) and the keyboard was the size of a standard laptop. It's thin though, not quite as thin as the MacBook Air but not much thicker. It's a rubberized device, there's a thin layer of rubber coating the whole thing. This makes it very easy to hang onto and gives it a pleasant matte finish. For that matter, contrary to the trend, the LCD has a matte finish. I detest glossy LCDs as it causes undue glare. So that part of the hardware is something I can get behind. The built in webcam was fun to take the pic it uses for the login screen but other than that, I've not really found a need to use it. I tried to use it with Facebook to snap pictures but apparently I need Java or some other plugin to make it work. I played with the webcam with ustream.tv and it works well with flash based web apps like that. The keyboard is different, larger than a typical netbook and missing a few keys, sort of. It has no "F#" keys but instead has keys that do the reload, back, forward, full screen, and other functions. They actually come in handy. Oh and the CAPS LOCK is gone, good riddance! I now have a "Search" button which opens a new tab ready for searching. Shift, Ctrl, and Alt are still there but understandably, no Windows key or popup menu key as on most Windows machines these days. Not needed anyway. The touchpad is HUGE! it is a half touchpad, half mouse button type device. You can move around like a normal touch pad, use 2 fingers to scroll, tap with 2 fingers to right-click, tap to click OR push down to click and there's an actual "button" feel to the click then. The touch pad can be a bit too over-zealous though as I was typing this entry I have had to reposition my cursor a few times because my thumb got a bit too close to it and made it jump up in the text. Also when scrolling, sometimes the scrolling skips down the page a ways beyond where I intended to go. The other day I popped off the battery to discover a slot for a SIM card. The Cr-48 comes with Wireless data from Verizon but apparently they don't plan on limiting it to just that, the SIM to me seems to indicate they'd possibly explore other carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile's GSM networks. One thing I find lacking about the network aspects of the Cr-48 is there isn't a built-in Ethernet port. You can add a USB one apparently as the Cr-48 has a USB port available which the online help says you can connect a USB ethernet adapter and it should work. USB thumb drives so far don't seem to be recognized but maybe that will change in the future. There's also an SD slot on the side. I have yet to play around with that but suspect the OS may look at it for media files like photos, videos, music. There's a VGA port on the left side and again I need to try that out so I'll talk about it in a future entry. Finally, the battery life is great. It's been a while since I could use a portable like this and not really worry that I was running the battery down. Every night I plug it in and though I haven't done this yet, I believe I could use it all day (off and on of course) and not need to charge it again until the next night. Apparently it has something like 6 hours of battery life, hard to beat. So to sum up, the Cr-48 is a good size laptop with enough power to comfortably run the intended OS. More on that in the my next entry.

More on the Cr-48 can be found on the official website http://www.google.com/chromeos/pilot-program-cr48.html

 
 

Cr-48 Chrome Notebook
The Cr-48 is the test notebook we designed for the Pilot program. It's the first of its kind.

It's ready when you are, booting in about 10 seconds and resuming from sleep instantly. There’s built-in Wi-Fi and 3G, so you can stay connected everywhere, and a webcam for video chat. The vibrant 12-inch LCD display, full-size keyboard and oversized touchpad let you enjoy the web comfortably. And at just 3.8 pounds with over eight hours of active usage and a week of standby time, it’s easy to take along for the ride.

What did we leave out? Spinning disks, caps-lock key, function keys, and lap burns.

The Cr-48 is available exclusively to participants in the Pilot program. Learn more

via google.com

I got home today to find an odd brown box on my doorstep. I didn't recognize the sender but it was addressed to me, not my wife (for some PartyLite shipment usually) and it wasn't from Woot either... curious. I know I signed up for the pilot program from Google for the new Chrome OS but they didn't "really" pick me to test this did they? I brought the package inside and got my winter stuff off and started to open it up, HOLY CRAP!!! THEY DID SEND IT TO ME!!! So I proceeded to let it thaw while I took it all in. I put the battery in it and opened the lid and WOW! It says Chrome on there! It was booting up and only took a few seconds. I was met with the setup screens I expected from other reviews and got to where I could take my picture with the built in netcam and then signed in. The OS is what I expect based on my experience with Hexxeh's builds and yet it was more up-to-date and more refined. So fare I've only really had trouble with the activation of the Verizon Wireless 3G data (100MB free a month for 2 years) which is OK because I plan to use Wifi for the most part but I will make sure to use the 100MB once I get it activated. If you google for reviews you'll see pretty much the same thing about the actual hardware from others. It's a rubberized, unbranded laptop. They call it a notebook but it's really a large Netbook in my opinion due to the SSD and small form factor. For a while this will be my primary PC at home and I think I'm going to like it. Stay tuned!