We talked about the Google Chrome OS launch a couple weeks ago and am finally getting around to reviewing it… I had troubles installing Google Chrome OS as a virtual machine in Windows but am now running it just fine – aside from a few crashes.
If you want to know what I think about Chrome OS right away… It’s meh.
First off – I got my Google Chrome OS Image from gdgt and am using VMWare’s VMPlayer to run the virtual machine. Some of my crashes may be the result of running it as a Virtual Machine so I won’t discount that in my Chrome OS experience.
So what is Chrome OS? Well, honestly … it’s just Google’s Chrome Browser, as you can see above. The only real difference is the dasboard (second image above) that links to web pages. Nothing special here.
And yep – that’s it! I was expecting something more exciting but it really is just the browser. Don’t get me wrong – I live in the browser but there are so many other things you realize you do when you are limited to just a browser. This is what Sergey wants – to keep it simple.
But this is too simple and really only fits the netbook market. There is no way I could run Google Chrome OS as my main operating system on my workstation or laptop. I could see running this on a netbook where you pretty much only need a browser.
As is – this will never compete directly with Windows and OSX. In this current iteration it’s only usable on netbooks. I was hoping for something revolutionary but got something overly simple. I expected to spend a couple hours reviewing it but it only took 10 minutes.
Here’s what I found through discussions on how to install Google Chrome OS on Windows with VMWare Player
1) Create a folder on your C drive called Virtual Machines
2) Download the Chromium image from Gdgt and extract the VMDK file to c:\Virtual Machines
3) Download and Install VMWare Player
4) In VMWare Player…
a. Select “Create a New Virtual Machine”
b. Select “I will install the operating system later” and click the Next button
c. Under Guest Operating System select Other and under Version select Other and click the Next button
d. Under Virtual Machine Name enter “Chrome OS” and under Location browse to the c:\Virtual Machines folder you created above and click the Next button. [Note: This will be the downloaded VMDK file and the newly created blank Virtual Machine in the same folder]
e. On the Specify Disk Capacity page leave defaults as they are and click the Next button.
f. On the Ready to Create Virtual Machine page click the Finish button.
5) Navigate to the c:\Virtual Machines folder in Windows Explorer.
a. Rename Chrome OS.vmdk to Chrome OS.vmdk.old
b. Rename chrome-os-0.4.22.8-gdgt.vmdk to Chrome OS.vmdk
6) On the VMWare Player main screen select Chrome OS and click Play Virtual Machine [Note: This will show the OS logon screen]
7) In the bottom right hand corner of the VMWare Player window right click on the Network Adapter Icon and click Disconnect then select Settings.
8) On the Virtual Machine Settings window on the right hand side under Network connection select Bridged and then click the OK button.
9) In the bottom right hand corner of the VMWare Player window right click on the Network Adapter Icon and click Connect
10) On the OS logon screen enter your Google e-mail address as your username and your Google password as your password.
I have Google’s Chrome OS running on a virtual machine at home and I like it already. I’ll have a real review at a later time but for now here’s one of the best demos I’ve seen.
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