So I got a Cr-48, and I’m having fun trying to break in to this and find out what it’s like having a purely web computing experience.
First, there are a couple of hardware annoyances. I realize this thing isn’t supposed to be a media center PC, but I use a laptop for video out to my old tube tv using s-video. This does not have s-video, so I’m going to have to drag out an extra monitor cable if I want to pump hulu out to my tv. It doesn’t have a Delete key (at least not that I’ve noticed yet) so I’m doing alot of backspacing. That’s annoying to me. And the placement of the huge touchpad is just a pain in the ass. I’m sure I’m not the only one who drags thumbs across the thing and starts typing in an entirely different line. Maybe I am. Who knows?
Aside from those complaints, this thing is really cool. It has a built in camera and mic, so video calls are kind of right there. It’s very light weight, very small, and wakes from sleep mode in just a couple of seconds. Really cool.
Damnit! It also seems to be lacking the end or home key so I can’t just jump to the end of a line.
This thing is really pretty useless without some sort of network connection, so it’s nice that they’ve included a 3g connection with this. It’s only 100 mb per month, so it really is likely limited to checking a calendar or doing a little email, but it’s the thought that counts. I’ll see if I feel the same next time I’m somewhere that doesn’t have wifi.
Recently I’ve read some complaints about the keyboard, but I’m not seeing the problem. It’s a modified laptop keyboard, and as for not being backlit, I haven’t watched my fingers while I type in quite some time, so I don’t really care if they’re backlit, textured, blank, what ever. This will do just fine.
Booting up for the first time was pretty simple. First, I had to find my home wifi, no problem. Then it went out and downloaded some updates. Finally, I logged in with my google account, so like my android, this is tied in to all google all the time. I’m cool with that, makes things easier. As a side note, I also have a google apps account with its own gmail account. This doesn’t give me any grief being logged in to the primary Cr-48 account at the same time as my google apps account. I haven’t tried multiple gmail accounts yet, but I’ll need to be doing that soon.
Once logged in, I went out to try to find some way of accessing media, because that is one of the primary purposes of my laptop. This doesn’t connect to the google media server running on my home desktop. I didn’t really expect it, but it’s still disappointing. From there I pointed my browser to my audiogalaxy account. The only disappointment there is the fact that audiogalaxy doesn’t support streaming flac through the browser yet, but I already knew that. I’ve got nearly full access to all of my music. Very cool. Next, trying to get to my video, I connected to my orb server account. Not a great service, so I didn’t expect much. I wasn’t dissappointed. It sluggishly played my music, and I gave up waiting on my video. I’m still looking for a solution that will get me my video in a timely manner, but I’ve got my music through audiogalaxy, the same service I’m using on my android.
I spent a little time browsing the chrome app store. Some cool stuff, mostly browser apps that run in chrome on any platform, but I’ll look more closely at those later.
Of course, all the google services that I tried worked, so this will definately keep me up and running with google docs, email, calendar, and what not.
Desktop switching is cool too. If you get sick of opening tabs, open a new window and you have a groovy little button that lets you switch between open windows.
Anyway, my first impressions are that this thing is pretty cool overall. Of course I will not be able to write code, but that’s expected. I’m having trouble accessing my own video as easily as I can on my laptop or desktop, which shows a glaring hole in quality services out there.
Anyway, there it is. My first rambling impressions.
First, there are a couple of hardware annoyances. I realize this thing isn’t supposed to be a media center PC, but I use a laptop for video out to my old tube tv using s-video. This does not have s-video, so I’m going to have to drag out an extra monitor cable if I want to pump hulu out to my tv. It doesn’t have a Delete key (at least not that I’ve noticed yet) so I’m doing alot of backspacing. That’s annoying to me. And the placement of the huge touchpad is just a pain in the ass. I’m sure I’m not the only one who drags thumbs across the thing and starts typing in an entirely different line. Maybe I am. Who knows?
Aside from those complaints, this thing is really cool. It has a built in camera and mic, so video calls are kind of right there. It’s very light weight, very small, and wakes from sleep mode in just a couple of seconds. Really cool.
Damnit! It also seems to be lacking the end or home key so I can’t just jump to the end of a line.
This thing is really pretty useless without some sort of network connection, so it’s nice that they’ve included a 3g connection with this. It’s only 100 mb per month, so it really is likely limited to checking a calendar or doing a little email, but it’s the thought that counts. I’ll see if I feel the same next time I’m somewhere that doesn’t have wifi.
Recently I’ve read some complaints about the keyboard, but I’m not seeing the problem. It’s a modified laptop keyboard, and as for not being backlit, I haven’t watched my fingers while I type in quite some time, so I don’t really care if they’re backlit, textured, blank, what ever. This will do just fine.
Booting up for the first time was pretty simple. First, I had to find my home wifi, no problem. Then it went out and downloaded some updates. Finally, I logged in with my google account, so like my android, this is tied in to all google all the time. I’m cool with that, makes things easier. As a side note, I also have a google apps account with its own gmail account. This doesn’t give me any grief being logged in to the primary Cr-48 account at the same time as my google apps account. I haven’t tried multiple gmail accounts yet, but I’ll need to be doing that soon.
Once logged in, I went out to try to find some way of accessing media, because that is one of the primary purposes of my laptop. This doesn’t connect to the google media server running on my home desktop. I didn’t really expect it, but it’s still disappointing. From there I pointed my browser to my audiogalaxy account. The only disappointment there is the fact that audiogalaxy doesn’t support streaming flac through the browser yet, but I already knew that. I’ve got nearly full access to all of my music. Very cool. Next, trying to get to my video, I connected to my orb server account. Not a great service, so I didn’t expect much. I wasn’t dissappointed. It sluggishly played my music, and I gave up waiting on my video. I’m still looking for a solution that will get me my video in a timely manner, but I’ve got my music through audiogalaxy, the same service I’m using on my android.
I spent a little time browsing the chrome app store. Some cool stuff, mostly browser apps that run in chrome on any platform, but I’ll look more closely at those later.
Of course, all the google services that I tried worked, so this will definately keep me up and running with google docs, email, calendar, and what not.
Desktop switching is cool too. If you get sick of opening tabs, open a new window and you have a groovy little button that lets you switch between open windows.
Anyway, my first impressions are that this thing is pretty cool overall. Of course I will not be able to write code, but that’s expected. I’m having trouble accessing my own video as easily as I can on my laptop or desktop, which shows a glaring hole in quality services out there.
Anyway, there it is. My first rambling impressions.
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