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Toward a Better Computing Experience | Constance Brown, President, Canton/Alliance/Massillon Users Group, Ohio, www.camug.com/, constanceb (at) camug.com |
Our total computing experience may well be shaped in the future by Microsoft competitors. Think that is an over statement? Just think of the changes Microsoft is making to keep up with new demands from a changing computer environment based on more mobile devices and the need to share documents quickly in a web-based environment. Many changes are being pioneered by competitors that are stepping up with new devices, applications, and software.
One competitor is Google. Google Docs were designed to allow the creation of documents online in an environment similar to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, making it easy to collaborate in real time. Price? No charge. A few months ago Google released the new Chrome Browser. Google also released the Android operating system for phones which are very popular and not susceptible to the viruses written for Windows. Droid phones allow users to browse the internet, exchange email, take pictures, and do hundreds of tasks quickly and efficiently. Oh, yes. People talk on them too.
We have been waiting for Google’s new Chrome Operating System, wondering how it will compare to Windows.
To answer that question, I visited Google’s official blog. Here is some of what I learned from the July 7, 2009, entry.
“Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And, of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.
“Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.”
“We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.”
On November 19, 2009, Google open-sourced the code for Chrome OS, a year before the developers anticipate that the OS will be ready for general use. Anyone who wishes to download the code and contribute to the development of the operating system may do so. I am not a developer and have no interest in writing code. But I am interested in the results. It is a totally new way of computing. Here are excerpts from Google’s official blog on November 19.
“First, it’s all about the web. All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs.”
“Second, because all apps live within the browser, there are significant benefits to security. Unlike traditional operating systems, Chrome OS doesn’t trust the applications you run. Each app is contained within a security sandbox making it harder for malware and viruses to infect your computer. Furthermore, Chrome OS barely trusts itself. Every time you restart your computer the operating system verifies the integrity of its code. If your system has been compromised, it is designed to fix itself with a reboot. While no computer can be made completely secure, we’re going to make life much harder (and less profitable) for the bad guys. If you dig security, read the Chrome OS Security Overview or watch the video.”
“Most of all, we are obsessed with speed. We are taking out every unnecessary process, optimizing many operations and running everything possible in parallel. This means you can go from turning on the computer to surfing the web in a few seconds. Our obsession with speed goes all the way down to the metal. We are specifying reference hardware components to create the fastest experience for Google Chrome OS.”
No doubt this new model will change the way we use computers in the future—at least for most people. Things will not change suddenly. But it is highly likely that a web based computing environment will be the norm for most users in the future.