Although I promised myself I wasn’t going to spend time running Google’s Chrome OS right now, I got the bug. Thanks to gdgt who put an image together, I’ve spent about 15 minutes tinkering with it in VirtualBox. Chrome OS is definitely bare-bones right now and slow in a VM, but any performance judgements should be considered irrelevant right now. Two thoughts came to mind as I got my hands dirty: who is this for and what can make it successful.

As far as the first question, Chrome OS is for someone like me — someone who spends 98% of their day in a browser. Or it could be for everyone else, provided they use it in the manner intended. Is it meant to replace a daily operating system for most people? No more so than a netbook would be a replacement for a high-powered workstation. It’s simply not that kind of tool. Chrome OS is intended for quick access to the web on a portable notebook-like companion device. Think of it as the environment and device you’d go to when you don’t want to boot up a full OS but you want a larger screen and keyboard than your smartphone has.

So what can make it successful? There are several factors, but one of the key ones is what makes Firefox so useful — extensions. As Mozilla’s browser has shown, you can do quite a bit in a browser with the right tools. And oddly enough, while Chrome OS doesn’t yet support extensions officially, you’ll see in my video that I have a few installed anyway. That’s my first look and first thoughts. I’ll have plenty more to say as the project matures.

Note: because I couldn’t resize the virtual machine or Chrome OS, I recommend watching this video in full screen and in the HD version when it becomes available.

What the hackintosh community brings, Apple taketh away. And the hackintoshers then put it back. With the 10.6.2 Mac OS X update, Apple removed support for Intel Atom CPUs, so all of those netbooks running Snow Leopard lost their spots. A modified kernel brings back support, says MacWorld, although I’d be pretty leery of said kernel. Put another way: I’d live with OS X 10.6.1 on my netbook — but that’s just me.

Even though I had fun running OS X on a both a netbook and a touchscreen UMPC, a couple of weeks with the operating system turned semi-frustrating. Ironically, it was for the same reasons that Windows was a hassle on UMPCs when they first hit: the desktop operating system isn’t designed to fit in a space under 1280 x 800 or so. Does it fit? Yup. Does it work well? Sometimes yes and sometimes no, depending on the dialog boxes you see. It simply required too much tweaking to use on a full time basis for me — not to mention that pesky licensing issue.

I tested Apple’s Magic Mouse with Windows 7 not long after I bought the device a few weeks ago. It paired through Bluetooth with no issues as expected, and works well, but lost was the scrolling I enjoy with a finger flick on my MacBook. Obviously, it’s a driver issue and I never thought twice about it — why expect a Mac-specific function to work in Windows, right?  Luckily, someone else looked into it and hacked a method to get the magic on Windows.

UNEASYsilence peeped a pair of modified bits from Apple’s latest Bluetooth Update and word is that they add touch scrolling to 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows. Although geared for using Windows in Bootcamp, folks are reporting success on non-Apple hardware as well. So far, it’s reported that vertical scrolling is working in a few apps like Firefox and Internet Explorer 8, but no multitouch mousing is here yet. If you’d rather not go the hacked route, Microsoft’s own Sidewinder X8 mouse driver could do the trick as well. I haven’t had time to try either method yet, since I don’t run Bootcamp. I have paired the Magic Mouse with the Windows 7 partition on my netbook though, so I expect a little hackery later today.

MoTR 190 is 37:49 minutes long and is a 34.7 MB file in MP3 format.

CLICK HERE to download the file and listen directly.

HOSTS: James Kendrick (Houston), Matthew Miller (Seattle) and Kevin C. Tofel (Philadelphia)

TOPICS:

Matt’s back from möbius with a handset rundown
Maybe Pocket PC isn’t such a bad name, after all
Hands on with the HTC HD2
Kevin has a 3.5G wireless broadband secret he’s been holding out on
Google’s Chrome OS explained

CONTACT US: Email us or leave us a voicemail on our SkypeLine!

SUBSCRIBE: Use this RSS feed with your favorite podcatcher or click this link to add us to iTunes!

Earlier this year, I got my hands on a Pogoplug. This small device aligns with my “personal cloud” theory by easily turning any USB drive into a hybrid device — data is available locally on the drive and remotely over the web. Today, Cloud Engines introduces the next-generation Pogoplug for $129, with availability in time for the holidays. This new version adds three more USB ports, bringing the total to four. That allows for the addition of multiple USB drives — traditional drives or flash memory-based — to your personal cloud. Along with easier sharing on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, the new features supported include:

• Automatically Synchronize Photos, Videos, Music and Other Selected Content – you can set Pogoplug to monitor drives for media so you don’t have to manually add the files. New content from iTunes, Windows Media Player and iPhoto is supported.
• Drag-and-Drop Music and Photo Slideshows – once you create a slide show with drag-and-drop, it’s easily sharable with anyone via the web, right through a browser.
• Easier Sharing with Pogoplug Address Book — after sharing your data with someone, Pogoplug remembers their contact information for future use, even if you remove the share.
• Global Search Across Multiple Drives and Pogoplugs — want to share data but you’re not sure which of your drives has it? Pogoplug can search all of them at one time. And if you have multiple Pogoplugs on the same account, it will even search across the devices.
• Organize Your Music, Photos and Videos — Music media is easier to browse with automatic displays sorted by album, artist and genre, complete with cover art. Video previews are shown live thumbnails.
• Play movies directly from my.pogoplug.com, or even to the iPhone — Video streaming from a Pogoplug is supported on most cameras, video cameras and mobile phones. You can also share movies for viewing over the web or with an iPhone.

All in all, this sounds like a solid step forward for the Pogoplug. Are there other options for these functions? Sure there are: Orb, Windows Home Server, various web storage and file synchronization services come to mind. But the ease of use and super-fast setup is what I found valuable in my testing of the original Pogoplug. It’s a product that doesn’t require any technical know-how of what’s going on — it simply works after the short setup. Pogoplug is now available for pre-order directly from Cloud Engines.

Friday is here, time to take a step back from the hurried happenings in Mobile Tech Manor and look back at the week. Some gear went back where it came from and other gear arrived for play evaluation. I experimented with alternative e-book readers to get a feel for what I like best before all the “real” readers hit early next year. Step into the Manor and let’s shoot the breeze.

Continue reading »

Here are some of today’s phone conversations I enjoyed reading or viewing on the web, along with some brief thoughts:

TomTom for iPhone gets voicevoice (TomTom) — $99 for an iPhone navigation app is a bit steep for me, but there are some new features to help justify the cost. New are the iPod player controls for music use,  text-to-speech functionality, and advanced lane guidance. Sounds good, but all the lanes by me are single lanes.

Motorola Motus takes a fuzzy picture (AndroidGuys) — I’m not talking about the camera of the phone — the picture of the actual handset is fuzzy. It looks like a Motorola CLIQ with a foldout, flat keyboard to me. Rumored specs show support for both T-Mobile’s and AT&T’s 3G frequency, but it’s way too early to make that determination.

Google News refreshed for mobiles (Google) — iPhone, Android, and Palm Pre devices get a new edition of Google News. The update includes a new, customizable “Jump To” menu, making it easier to get at the news you want. First take my iPhone? I like it — it’s snappy and I can get at what I want in fewer clicks.

Image Credit: Tech Radar

Google’s Chrome OS might have the focus today, but Qualcomm made sure that people don’t forget about Android. The company showed off a smartbook concept made by Quanta and powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform. Although this is the same chipset running in some high-end smartphones, the Snapdragon chip isn’t underclocked — it’s powering Android on the full 1GHz speed on the Cortex-A8 architecture.

Bill Timmons of Qualcomm envisions smartbooks in the same price range as a smartphone, but I think that’s a tough challenge, barring the subsidy factor. While the devices have the guts of a smartphone, there’s still a larger display to pay for. If these devices are too close in price to netbooks, I suspect that netbooks will win out with most consumers — people will perceive the fuller featured netbook running the familiar Windows OS as a better value. Anything over $200 and I just don’t see smartbooks becoming successful. And while I was leaning towards Chrome OS boosting the slow starting smartbook market, the lack of application support brings me back to Android as a potential operating system for smartbooks and netbooks.

Oh no he didn’t take the 18.4-inch Acer Aspire 8940G notebook to the local coffee shop. Oh yes he did, and it’s been an adventure from the get-go. First up, I had to find a bag at Mobile Tech Manor that the giant laptop would fit in and close. I must have tried 5 or 6 bags before I realized that if I ignored the special laptop pouch within a giant Targus backpack I have and put it in the main compartment, that it would then fit and close.

Then I had to haul the 10+ pound notebook to the car, and to the coffee shop without breaking my shoulder. Once inside the shop, I had to pass over many tables until finding one that was big enough to actually handle the giant laptop. Once that was done I was all set, and I’m working away with this gorgeous screen. Battery life is looking to be between 2.5 and 3 hours, not bad for such a powerhouse with an 8-cell battery.

The keyboard is delightful, it is a cross between a chiclet style and a “real” keyboard. The keys are flat, but have full travel unlike chiclet keys. Having a 10-key on board is taking me back to the old desktop keyboards, and it’s useful as can be. I am successfully fighting the urge to fire up Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, that would be too much for the crowded shop. It sure would be fun, though.

It is Thursday and that means it’s time for another Palm Press. Palm Press is our weekly look at the world of Palm. The Pixi has only been selling for a short bit but you can already pick one up at Amazon for $25. Yes, you read that right, $25. Palm and Sprint should just go ahead and give the things away. Sell us accessories, the mark-ups obviously higher anyway. BTW, the Pre is only $80 at Amazon. Things can’t be sitting too well with Palm right about now, as savvy shoppers will have even less reason to buy a new Pixi instead of a Pre.

This week saw the rollout of webOS 1.3.1, and it was largely a rollup of fixes and minor tweaks. One of the most significant changes in the new release, to me anyway, is the inclusion of browser cookies in the backup. That means your browsing information survives a rebuild and restore, which is great news. Yahoo! users will now love the synchronization with webOS as it was added to the mix. The change in webOS 1.3.1 most discussed is the one that isn’t there, Palm apparently decided to throw in the towel in the wrestling match with Apple over iTunes compatibility. This update is the first by Palm that didn’t reverse the most recent iTunes update to block webOS phones from syncing with iTunes.

In happier news for Palm, the Pre was named by Consumer Reports as one of the top products of the year. The Pre placed eighth on the CR list of top smartphones, behind the iPhones (3GS and 3G) and the BlackBerry Bold.