The strange simplicity of the cr-48

I've had my Chromebook for a few weeks now, and I'm amazed by how much I like it. It was fun over the holidays, and I have to admit it made me feel a little special to tell the guys at the Intel booth at CES that I had one of my own when I was playing with the one they had on display.

I have strayed from the path though. I couldn't shake the nagging voice in the back of my head that said "but I need to run programs." With the new easy script for installing Ubuntu, I finally caved and now my chromebook runs my favorite linux. It runs quite well - snappy, quick boot, maintains the stellar battery life. But then, it's just another Ubuntu netbook. I tweaked the interface and made it all pretty. I installed a bunch of apps from Software Center. But then, I don't really run any of them.

So, today, I flipped the developer switch back over to normal user, putting me back in chromeOS. I am amazed at the lack of interface, and how much it doesn't bother me. There's nothing but tabs, an address bar, and bookmarks up there. There's nothing on the sides or the bottom, just content. It's surprisingly liberating.

I have to admit that I was inspired to come back to the simplicity of chromeOS after reading an article at Gizmodo about how the macbook air may be the perfect traveller's writing machine. Specifically, it was this description that struck me - "the kind of tool that gets out of the way and just lets a writer, well, write." I thought "hey, that's what the chromebook does, except it really does get completely out of the way." So, here I am, back in chromeOS, and what's the first thing I do? I write this. There's just something about having no interface at all in the way, just the raw internet, that makes me stop wasting my time poking at things and tweaking interfaces and just write.

On the other hand, I still had to take the SD card out of the camera and put it in another computer to upload it to picasa to post this. I tried the flikr suggestion, and while I got filesystem access, it crashed the page trying to load the photo. There's something to be said for having a little bit of access to the system.

Orange, a computer in an amp

I thought “oh neat, an orange amp” so I took some pictures.  Then I started wondering what it was doing at the Intel booth.  Turns out, it’s a computer.  In an amp.  How convenient.  That just unlocks all kinds of live music processing potential, all in one box.

Zoe Keating, cellist at Intel CES

To demonstrate the power of the Intel processors, Intel hosted a contest for musicians.  Zoe Keating and her amazing cello work won a spot to play at CES (and maybe some other prizey type stuff too, I can’t remember).  She’s live sampling and looping back to create layers and layers of sound, controlling it with the foot pedals.  

Zoe is based in San Francisco and actively performs all over.  She also has albums on iTunes.  Check out all her amazing work.  How’s that for using technology to create music!

My CES coverage

I’m at CES in Las Vegas right now, and it is SO BIG.  The sheer amount of things I want to see and write about are keeping me very busy.  Most of my coverage will be at the TabletPCBuzz blog. 

bModo on vacation

The bModo was a wonderful tool to have with me during my holidays back in the midwest. Here it is being my book while we waited for our 3 hour delayed flight out. Wifi on the planes was free thanks to google, so I was able to browse and play during the flights. Having a lit up keyboard was really nice. I had the chromebook with me also, but found that in the low light of the planes (one of the flights was a red-eye), it was easier to pull out the tablet and use the nicely lit up on screen keyboard rather than lighting up the whole area around me with the reading light on the plane.

The built in 3G was great, as it allowed me to be online and even upload a post on the drive between my parents and my in-laws. The GPS was quick to connect and accurate while in the car, even if it couldn't get a signal at all inside. Considering there is an entire sub-section of the exopc forums devoted to how to add a 3G/GPS card, I think there are plenty of people who would appreciate the built-in-ness of it on the bModo. This is actually the first device I've used with the 3G built in, and I have to say I'm sold. I know one can use a Mifi now and get several devices online at once, or even use tethering from the phone. But in this case, it was as easy as popping the sim card from my phone into the external slot on the bModo, and then I was online without having to worry about another device.

I think my favorite thing about this tablet is the size. It's a big screen with a great resolution. I don't feel at all cramped like I do on the netbooky resolution of 1024x600. The bModo is even usuable in portrait with 768 pixels across. It's a good thing too, as it comes with an accelerometer, making the orientation switch super easy. It's also so thin for having such a large screen. There's something about the thinness combined with the rounded edges and the soft rubberized backing that just makes it feel right. And the capacitive screen is just so responsive and easy to use. My dad, who strictly prohibits fingers from coming within an inch of a laptop screen for fear of leaving a smudge, actually enjoyed using the touch screen on this tablet. He took to it so quickly, that the first thing he did with the chromebook was try to touch the tabs at the top to switch from one to the other. I think that's the mark of a good touch interface - it's so easy and natural to use that it makes you want to touch everything.

Speaking of being easy and natural to touch, photos are great on this tablet. I used to think multi-touch photo manipulation was just a party trick to show off the two finger stuff. Then I took this thing to parents and in-laws and realized that the number one thing families do when they haven't seen each other in a while is show off photos. It was so neat to be able to flip through the slideshow with swipes and zoom in with a pinch. With the higher resolution, the interface doesn't get in the way as much, and more of the screen is devoted to actually looking at the picture.

Of course it does have some drawbacks. The vertical viewing angles aren't the best, so you do have to hold it up, or prop it up, or lean over it on a table. The screen is glossy, so you get reflections and glare. The battery life is just barely 4 hours. It is over 2lbs. The big screen does make the device too big to fit in some of my smaller purses. But it is a full blown computer in an impressively thin package with a very nice touch screen. Overall, I've really enjoyed using it and would definitely recommend it.