Week One in Review: The CloudBook

Technically, my Chrome OS laptop came a week ago yesterday. Yet I didn't actually start using my CloudBook until the day after I received it. As much as I wanted to pull that sucker out of the box and start putting it through its paces, in a rare act of self-control I followed the instructions to the letter and waited for the battery to fully charge before using it. I didn't want to take an opportunity like this for granted. Friday was the first full day of CloudBook usage, and by executive decree, I'm picking Friday as my CloudBook's anniversary day.

Like many of life's blessings, my CloudBook couldn't have arrived at a more inconvenient time.

Last Friday found me in the middle of deadlines for a local monthly periodical. Like the quote from the great Douglas Adams, I don't exactly consider deadlines a due date for content delivery, but more as a series of days where the amount of writing, interviewing, editing, and haphazard photography accelerates gradually until it reaches a crescendo of frantic typing.

Needless to say, I was unable to complete the amount of technical evaluation that most geeks would dutifully perform after revieving such a wonderful xmas surprise from the good folks at Google. Though there wasn't much technical  evaluation going on, as soon as the CloudBook was charged and ready to go, I quickly put it to use helping me get all I needed done for the next three days.

The learning curve of switching to the CloudBook was more of a gradual ramp. For the last three years I've been using my old Sony Vaio laptop, bless its old silicon soul. While I will hate to see it go, the poor thing is getting to where it starts freezing with just a few programs running simultaneously. In fact, because of the inherent limitation in owning a three year old laptop, I've been using the Vaio to perform as a netbook. It has been my heavy, cumbersome portal to the internet, where I use a variety of cloud applications to do all my work.

Needless to say, I easily transitioned to the apex of engineering that is now sitting on my desk.

Notes on the CloudBook's attributes and drawbacks:

• Video: The ability to watch Netflix is nonexistent, which might explain my boosted level of productivity this week. As GigaOm and many others (including heavy coverage on TechCrunch) have reported: the CloudBook's flash experience is lacking, to put it diplomatically. Sites like YouTube and Hulu are still usable, but generally unpleasant to watch. The upside to this is that those sites have very little to do with my work load.
• Physical Design: Google has made it clear that the Cr-48 pilot project is more about testing the practicality of cloud-only computing and not about the 'book's physical vessel. Still, it's hard not to make some comments about the hardware design. So I'll try to keep it superficial. In a possible iAnything backlash, people seem to love the the matte-black box of the CloudBook. They love the feel. They love the complete lack of branding. Sometimes anonymity is cool.
• Receiving from the Cloud: Is fast. And easy. WiFi connection is simple. Verizon 3G connection is even more simple, which makes it very, very dangerous. In fact, bumping my monthly 3G memory allowance might be a future necessity possibility.
• Transmitting to the Cloud: Of all the things that I wish the CloudBook would do better - or do at all - this is the one. So far I've been able to upload files that I've downloaded. That's not hard at all. But that doesn't help when I have original content - let's say photos I've just shot for an article - that I need to transfer an album in the cloud. I can't seem to tell the upload prompt that I want it to find the storage location of the camera I've plugged into the CloudBook's USB port. Granted, I haven't looked into this much further than simply trying it once (so I might be posting a mea culpa at a later date).

Despite some of the small hardware/software hiccups, the CloudBook works. More to follow on its attributes/drawbacks and the cloud computing as a practice.

- Captain B.