Kogan Beats Samsung and Acer With World's First Chrome OS Laptop 103
cylonlover writes "Australian manufacturer Kogan will ship the world's first notebook featuring Google's open source Chrome OS from June 7. The release date for the 11.6'' Agora Chromium Laptop means that Kogan has pipped Samsung and Acer by just over a week in the race to be the first company to offer a Chromium OS notebook."
Can I install Linux on that? (Score:3, Interesting)
The real question is if I can install some real Linux on it, or is it locked down?
""even if you lose your computer, you can just log in to another Kogan Agora Chromium Laptop and get right back to work."
Yeah right, as if you always have a top DSL connection everywhere. And if you loose your connection are you loosing any data, too?
With Linux it's just so easy to backup your data. Because in Linux everything is just a file, you can use the simple tools like rsync or dd. Or just open a file manager and copy your whole system to some hard disk. Trust me it works. Take a laptop, with the same system, and just copy /home to some external hard disk. Then copy it back to the new laptop and you have all settings and all data on your new laptop. No magic "cloud" is needed. You can even just copy your whole system to the new computer and you don't need to install anything on the new laptop.
I still think the whole "cloud for private people" is just a scam for your money so that you need always either expensive DSL connection at home or G3 or UMTS for your laptop. The idea is, even if you use your laptop, with they have now plenty of data capacity for very cheap (like 500GB for 50$) you still need a constant internet connection either with wireless or G3/UMTS.
Re:Chrome OS will fail. (Score:5, Interesting)
"There is a lot Google does right, but it simply can't deliver a full working environment. Fundamental problems in its product management culture will have to be resolved before anything on the scale of a Chrome OS will work."
Not only that but the whole "cloud" concept for private people doesn't make any sense at all. Storage and CPU power is so cheap, but compared to that the connection to the internet is very expensive and very unreliable. Even in high-tech countries like the US, or Germany, the latency is very height, like 60ms up to 100ms (compare that with the computer latency with is around 1ms), and it's expensive compared to 0$ for the local hard disk. If we are compare G3/G4/UMTS then it's much more expensive, slow, and unreliable.
The whole concept of cloud had made sense back in the days when storage and CPU power was so expensive that only the universities could afford it. So you had at home a relative cheap box to connect to the university computer to run your heavy computations.
For private consumers it just a big disadvantage. For firms it would make some more sense to outsource your I.T. But you should know if it makes sense to make your whole business depended on some second firm in the cloud.
For Google of course it makes perfect sense to push for the cloud. They make their money of advertising and the people's data. So of course they want you to be connected 24/7 to their services and store your data on their servers. But it's just stupid for anyone who do real work with their computer. But for facebook/hulu/youtube people , maybe it's ok if the laptop is so much cheaper. But then Google don't need to invest in the cloud-software stuff like Google Docs.
Re:Can I install Linux on that? (Score:4, Interesting)
The real question is if I can install some real Linux on it, or is it locked down?
""even if you lose your computer, you can just log in to another Kogan Agora Chromium Laptop and get right back to work."
Yeah right, as if you always have a top DSL connection everywhere. And if you loose your connection are you loosing any data, too?
No because the data is all the the cloud. At most you lose (not loose) a few seconds of work typing in a Google Doc for instance. See the many youtube videos of this in action if you like.
With Linux it's just so easy to backup your data. Because in Linux everything is just a file, you can use the simple tools like rsync or dd. Or just open a file manager and copy your whole system to some hard disk. Trust me it works.
Yes because the majority of computer users know how what rsync or dd are let alone how to use them? I'd guess that 1% or less of computer users these days have ever touched a *nix command line.
Take a laptop, with the same system, and just copy /home to some external hard disk. Then copy it back to the new laptop and you have all settings and all data on your new laptop. No magic "cloud" is needed.
Yes but how many stories do we know of people who didn't back up their laptop, or hadn't done it for months, or people who've lost the laptop and their backups. Why not have the OS do the heavy lifting to protect the users data? This is where the "magic" cloud works. You don't need to find someone tech savvy to spend 4 hours copying all your data back and reinstalling your applications. You kind of just log in and you have it all back.
Because if you are an IT guy, chances are you've done that for your friends and family. I can see how a Chromebook would see my aging parents calling on me less.
You can even just copy your whole system to the new computer and you don't need to install anything on the new laptop.
I still think the whole "cloud for private people" is just a scam for your money so that you need always either expensive DSL connection at home or G3 or UMTS for your laptop. The idea is, even if you use your laptop, with they have now plenty of data capacity for very cheap (like 500GB for 50$) you still need a constant internet connection either with wireless or G3/UMTS.
No the scam is around getting you hooked to online services so advertisers can target you better. When your offline doing something on your computer, you're not so reachable. Get your conspiracy theories straight! Geez. ;)
Re:Beat? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes and no. The fact that you can get an android phone from any carrier or vendor makes it hard for anybody to go way overboard on controlling the platform. Ultimately if anybody messes up the consumer experience too much they'll go elsewhere since they have options.
I think their main concern was that they didn't want the iPhone cornering the market. Apple is pretty heavy-handed with controlling the experience there, and if they felt like Google ads or services weren't the ones their customers should be using, Google would be stuck fighting things out in court. By giving consumers options it constrains what everybody else can get away with - why would you buy a phone that limits options you actually care about when other devices don't?
Plus, Chrome and Android are forcing the market to advance. How fast were Javascript interpreters a few years ago? How fast are almost all of them today? Arguably Firefox is a lot faster at rendering Google's pages as a result of Chrome coming out than it would have been if Google merely tried to submit patches for it.
Competition keeps everybody honest.