Originally Posted by kreddy

I am no expert in these things. Could we log into any computer anywhere with net connection and start using our virtual system with all our files and data?

OT but that is do able with or without virtual system. There are many free/paid clients in the market for such services such as FTP and remote control.

[tanwaramit]

Google Chrome OS is a welcome news. However it will be a long way for google to capture the market.

It needs to focus on some of the primary apps like text editor (word), spreadsheet, presentation just to name a few. Now they may have options to ask some other vendors to develop (or make it compatible for chrome) it for them OR they develop themselves. Now if they do it, they will do a good job like Chrome, but there are others too, games, other office based applications developed on Windows.

This will take some time for Google to create some effect, as not everyone will be ready to develop a product compatible to google OS from day 1 or day 10 for that matter.

I am keeping my fingers crossed and expect google to churn out an excellent product

[tintin82]

Originally Posted by GTO

Link to Full Article

1. Should Microsoft Windows be worried? Should Apple be worried?

They better start getting worried, not because of the Google initiative, but rather because the way internet is slowly changing the way things work. It's like the great landmass movement when continents were shaped.

Originally Posted by GTO

2. What is the advantage of cloud computing, where softwares are web based? I mean, hard disk space is only getting cheaper. And I'd rather have my data on my own computer than some hackable server out there in the www. If I want to work offline (something I do frequently), the windows system has an advantage.

Cloud computing right now is more geared enterprise applications and targets Handheld devices and ultra portables. It'll be sometime before they replace desktop software. The problem with your own data in your hard disk is accessibility. You cannot access it when you roam around the world. Imagine you had an excel sheet which you had to massage immediately for a adhoc client presentation. You can whip out your handheld, load the application from the browser and change the data you wanted and show a presentation right from the device.

Originally Posted by GTO

3. For most of us, our lives revolve around MS software (my client management system, organiser software, accounting software etc. etc.). If google wants to make this click, they'd make the software adaptable out of the box. If not, why would the masses move?

This monopoly will still last for atleast a decade in its current form. And if Microsoft does wake up to reality and work towards betterment, the monopoly will continue. The problem now for users who do want to migrate away from Microsoft is that they'll face a brickwall literally when it comes to compatibility with other OS's.

Originally Posted by GTO

4. Will it be free?

I expect that basic services and software like text editors and spreadshhet applications will be free and you have to pay extra for bells and whistles.

Originally Posted by GTO

5. How can a browser-based OS be an OS in itself?

You still need a hard booting OS to make your system functional. Once the OS loads, all features will be determined by the cloud subscription you'be bought. It's not as if the OS will be dumb with just one browser application. It will have basic features like file management, and offline mode and other little things which make up an OS. It's the major features which will be accessed from the internet.

Originally Posted by GTO

Google's products till date have been the best, or amongst the best, from their competition. Search (duh!), my brother swears by Chrome and I know several particular personalities who can't live without Gmail. The list goes on (calendar, earth etc.).

That's more of a hype than reality. Chrome still sucks when compared to Mozilla, GTalk is not even 1/4th of Yahoo or MSN when you look at features. GMail is as susceptible to data loss as demonstrated in the past, Android is nothing to wow about. But one credit to them is they keep things simple and keep usability on top of everything else. Im not saying they're not good, they are, but not earth shattering. Microsoft was in a similar position when Windows 95 was launched and for a few years after that.

[Surprise]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Nobody can shake Microsoft from its current position for a while...

SAAS technology is a definite threat to eat its Sales on Office package.. even a 25% market share means a lot. Products from ZOHO & others taking fine shape on this front. But getting MS down is a very very tough task

[Jaggu]

So what do i do if i dont have internet connectivity? Yup this is one major issue where countries like India need to catch up wrt cloud computing, me thinks.

You will never realize it till you miss it, like me in the middle of nowhere trying to access Google map on iPhone without cell connectivity.

Give it another decade to evolve.

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

Originally Posted by GTO

Can the Tech Pros throw more light on this?

Ain't a tech pro. But, I am quite fed up with M$.

The problem is, I have a computer at home. And most of colleagues do not. So, I end up as the unofficial "tech support" at job. And when I ask people to pop in the install CD, there'aint one. ;-P

I know it is piracy, but a business which cannot protect its own IP simply has no business doing business. Seriously.

1. Should Microsoft Windows be worried? Should Apple be worried?

They are as worried as Skoda is about their India service.

2. What is the advantage of cloud computing, where softwares are web based?

Easier sysadministration, for example.

And I'd rather have my data on my own computer than some hackable server out there in the www.

What about corporate servers?? AFAICT, several big sites (like news papers) have their search "powered" by google.

If I want to work offline (something I do frequently), the windows system has an advantage.

Even Linux, on which the Google chrome OS is based, can be used stand alone. Edit:- That does not, of course, mean that Chrome can be used stand alone.

3. For most of us, our lives revolve around MS software (my client management system, organiser software, accounting software etc. etc.). If google wants to make this click, they'd make the software adaptable out of the box. If not, why would the masses move?

Wine.

My guess is that Google can/will/may turn to brewing better Wine.

Before you flame me, wine is the WINdows Emulator. Install wine on a Linux box, and you have most windows applications runing in a jiffy.

4. Will it be free?

If it is Linux based, it better be. "Free as in freedom."

5. How can a browser-based OS be an OS in itself?

As a user of Microsoft's windows OS, you (or most of you) ought to know. Take out Internet Explorer and what is left is an emaciated skeleton of an OS, with very little functionality other than booting up the system.

Heck, IIRC, even spell check will not work in outlook without MS' Office suite installed.

Google's products till date have been the best, or amongst the best, from their competition.

The best product is not always the market leader. Look at Apple. Or Fiat. (ugh oh. have I converted this into yet another Fiat bashing thread?)

[jp2u]

Originally Posted by GTO

1. Should Microsoft Windows be worried? Should Apple be worried?

Microsoft and Apple are the two platforms which can not be replaced by any other new OS. Both these softwares have penetrated well in to each and every vertical of the society and has evolved with them. For example there are certain softwares which can only be run on MS and respectivly for Apple.

MS and Apple have slowly moved from the WANT category to the NEED category, so Google OS can just be an option but never can be the solution.

P.S: The above expressed is entirely my POV and can vary from person to person

[aburagohain]

The Google OS will be targeting the Netbooks, mostly devices used to connect to the web and work/play/surf as per my understanding. For heavier applications, this is not viable, e.g. for a person doing extensive image editing or any other heavy duty task, this OS may not be suitable.
The popularity of an OS totally depends on the applications available on that OS, just the OS being there by any vendor does not mean anything to the user unless there are supported applications to do his work in. This is probably why MS gives their development tools almost free, so that there are more people developing more applications using MS technology and at the end, the user needs to buy an MS OS to run those applications, looks pretty logical to me

[jaygeetee]

Originally Posted by GTO

Link to Full Article

Can the Tech Pros throw more light on this?

1. Should Microsoft Windows be worried? Should Apple be worried?

2. What is the advantage of cloud computing, where softwares are web based? I mean, hard disk space is only getting cheaper. And I'd rather have my data on my own computer than some hackable server out there in the www. If I want to work offline (something I do frequently), the windows system has an advantage.

3. For most of us, our lives revolve around MS software (my client management system, organiser software, accounting software etc. etc.). If google wants to make this click, they'd make the software adaptable out of the box. If not, why would the masses move?

4. Will it be free?

5. How can a browser-based OS be an OS in itself?

Google's products till date have been the best, or amongst the best, from their competition. Search (duh!), my brother swears by Chrome and I know several particular personalities who can't live without Gmail. The list goes on (calendar, earth etc.).

Interesting comments here too

Let me try to answer it
1) MS doesn't need to be worried for another 4-5 years atleast and I guess it's the same with Apple. But after that, I wouldn't be too sure. Google knows that it's biggest bet is to move everyone online and with the increasing internet speeds(4mbps lines are the norm in UK) it will very soon be a possibility. Lets wait and watch.

2) Your machine at home can be compromised, more easily than a google server. Think of 10 years(5 maybe) down the line when your car would connnect to the internet, download your emails and read it out to you (Blue&Me anyone ) or your mobile phone replaces your computer for all internet work. Where you have a holographic 3D display that makes everything look super cool and trust me we are very close to seeing these days. In such cases you would like it better if you had all your info in the 'CLOUD' so you check in from everywhere, car, bus, office, home, garden and still access all of it. In some years, internet will be like electricity, ALWAYS ON (and we in India might have load shedding for that too)

3) Google already has a replacement for MSWORD and MSExcel on the internet called Google Docs and Spreadsheet. Getting a lot of the non-business types to their fold is the starting point (think of all the people who have email ids using their OS) By the time the OS is ready for mass consumption, they would have taken care of this problem

4) Yes, it will be free.

5) It's not browser based really, they already have a OS for mobile phones called ANDROID and they will use that as a platform to build the Chrome OS. They will just make it such that it would seem to be like a browser where your machine would be used only to get you on to the internet(like a browser.

My 2 cents...

[greenh0rn]

Originally Posted by GTO

Can the Tech Pros throw more light on this?

Alright, let the pro take the stage for a moment

Originally Posted by GTO

1. Should Microsoft Windows be worried? Should Apple be worried?

For Microsoft, not worried, but **** scared. Actually, shitting in their pants. To use a crude analogy, our ancient scriptures prescribed a Brahmastra against an all-too-powerful enemy. Google Chrome OS is precisely that Brahmastra.

Originally Posted by GTO

2. What is the advantage of cloud computing, where softwares are web based? I mean, hard disk space is only getting cheaper. And I'd rather have my data on my own computer than some hackable server out there in the www. If I want to work offline (something I do frequently), the windows system has an advantage.

Cloud computing (I'm both an enterprise user and a consumer) works in both online and offline modes. Of course, it expects you to be online all the time to access data from the cloud, but it takes care that you can perform basic tasks (read/compose email/memo/presentation/spreadsheet, do basic reports in accounting software, manage contacts in a CRM) even when you are offline.

From a larger perspective, what we are seeing is a battle between two philosophies around Cloud. Google is all cloud, but Microsoft is software plus cloud. MSFT says you must have basic client software on your own system (simple strategy to protect Windows' turf), but the services can be run off the cloud. Google says even the client software can be on cloud. I've been using salesforce.com as our core enterprise CRM software purely on the cloud for last 2 years, and I love the fact that I have one less application to run on my already strained Windows PC.

The biggest personal advantage that I see with cloud computing- you can go back to buying a PC with 128 MB RAM (or whatever it takes to run a fully-featured browser) and still be perfectly happy with its performance- since the client apps are all running off the cloud. Biggest enterprise advantage- my IT team does not need to worry about upgrading/backing up/managing servers for our CRM, they don't need to worry about software upgrades, hang ups etc. All they need to worry about is constant Internet connectivity

Originally Posted by GTO

3. For most of us, our lives revolve around MS software (my client management system, organiser software, accounting software etc. etc.). If google wants to make this click, they'd make the software adaptable out of the box. If not, why would the masses move?

This is actually a grey area and we should wait and see how Google works around it, but I reckon they'd definitely have a few aces up their sleeve by the time we can buy a netbook running Google OS. Most people are used to running MS software simply because, how shall I put it, they are addicted to it. But there's no reason why Google cannot revolutionize your daily-use apps like Word, Powerpoint and Excel and make new versions that are even more user-friendly, and run entirely off the cloud. I see Google apps as a Model-T in evolution of SaaS, but IT ain't auto industry (remember the Bill Gates joke, anyone?) and it shouldn't be long that Google apps comes charged as Toyota Prius, or BMW 7 series. Maybe by end-2010?

Originally Posted by GTO

4. Will it be free?

Well, the netbooks running Google will definitely be cheaper, if only by hundreds of rupees. Software will be free in the initial months, maybe years. After all, Google has set itself the task of running a charitable, MSFT de-addiction center!

Originally Posted by GTO

5. How can a browser-based OS be an OS in itself?

Chrome OS is more than a browser. It builds upon a Linux based kernel, which takes care of basic OS functionality like device drivers, file management, input/output support etc. etc. Of course, you can bet that with the Google tweaks, a full system boot up will take less than 5-10 seconds.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Surprise

SAAS technology is a definite threat to eat its Sales on Office package.. even a 25% market share means a lot. Products from ZOHO & others taking fine shape on this front. But getting MS down is a very very tough task

Even Microsoft is into SAAS, have you heard of Microsoft CRM? But the dependency on Internet connectivity is the biggest threat to SAAS.

Originally Posted by Jaggu

So what do i do if i dont have internet connectivity? Yup this is one major issue where countries like India need to catch up wrt cloud computing, me thinks.

You have hit the nail on the head. As of now cloud computing can only be used by corporates with high-speed and highly redundant leased line connectivity. And that costs a lot of money. Unlike power, one can't have UPS or Inverter for Internet. If you lose connection, you are stuck! How can a home user depend on SAAS for everything when Internet connectivity and the speed is not guaranteed?

Originally Posted by BaCkSeAtDrIVeR

As a user of Microsoft's windows OS, you (or most of you) ought to know. Take out Internet Explorer and what is left is an emaciated skeleton of an OS, with very little functionality other than booting up the system.

That's a very narrow view of an OS. Most of the products I have designed/developed run on servers, where real people login only for setup/maintenance. So browsers are almost never used there, you could as well remove the IE.

Originally Posted by aburagohain

The popularity of an OS totally depends on the applications available on that OS, just the OS being there by any vendor does not mean anything to the user unless there are supported applications to do his work in.

Exactly, Microsoft became popular because of this. Since DOS ran on an open PC architecture that used off the shelf parts, everybody was free to make other hardware work with it. While Apple and IBM's MCA PC, PS/2 and OS/2 despite being superior technology, kept their technology close to heart and were left far behind. Best technology doesn't necessarily win, it is the most practical technology that wins.

Originally Posted by aburagohain

This is probably why MS gives their development tools almost free, so that there are more people developing more applications using MS technology and at the end, the user needs to buy an MS OS to run those applications, looks pretty logical to me

This was another masterstroke from MS. I was a Borland C++ IDE user for most of the 90s, but with Visual Studio 97 Microsoft finally got me converted. Since then I have not been given any reason to look elsewhere. Heck, I even do HP-UX (Unix) coding on VC++ IDE before copying them over to HP-UX.

Originally Posted by jaygeetee

Google knows that it's biggest bet is to move everyone online and with the increasing internet speeds(4mbps lines are the norm in UK) it will very soon be a possibility. Lets wait and watch.

I wouldn't hold my breath. The catch is you need continuous connectivity. We have had electricity for 60 years and yet we can't get reliable uninterrupted power supply.

Originally Posted by jaygeetee

Where you have a holographic 3D display that makes everything look super cool and trust me we are very close to seeing these days.

I remember seeing the movie Disclosure when it released in 1994. And I thought it is all VR and hologram technology once the CD-ROMs get faster, just give it 5 years. OK, it is 15 years and where is my VR TV, VR phone, etc?

There are lots of applications that are not cloud compatible. Server based applications will still run on servers. Highly graphics intensive operations like photo/video editing and gaming can't be SAASed away.

Ultimately we have to realise that the computer is a tool towards an end, but not the end itself. The goal or work should be achieved using the most appropriate tool, but using the tool should not become the goal. Cloud computing is just another tool that is appropriate for certain applications and inappropriate many other applications.

If Google OS makes itself appropriate for most applications, then it will succeed eventually. However, it won't succeed just because it is from Google or because it is Cool.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by greenh0rn

To use a crude analogy, our ancient scriptures prescribed a Brahmastra against an all-too-powerful enemy. Google Chrome OS is precisely that Brahmastra.

After watching the tech-industry for two decades, I am not so sure. I am yet to see a pre-product hype that turned into reality. Every major paradigm shift in computing happened in unexpected ways. You see that only when you look back.

[devarshi84]

too early for google to jump into cloudbook computing. the world is not ready, the vendors are not ready and they are not ready.

They Better look at Android development where they hold an advantage.

[aaggoswami]

A link here with a single image:
Chrome OS: First leaked pictures and specs? (Update: Scam) - Computerworld Blogs

Nobody can make Microsoft come at No.2. See what Google achieved with Chrome web browser. Even today, Chrome is faster than Firefox 3.5, let alone IE8 ( which is quite slow ). I think Opera is doing quite good as compared to Chrome.

I doubt that Google Chrome OS will make a huge impact. Microsoft sells OS but also provides developer tools like Visual Studio that are very widely used.
Basically we are so much used to Windows that if Google Chrome wants to displace Windows, it has to be what is basically free Windows with all developer tools available for free. Else this OS will end up like Linux. Despite being free, I mean literally one does not pay for OS in case of Linux, still it is not able to beat windows and I am sure in future too it will not be able to trouble Windows.
Thanks to DreamSpark, I have genuine Server 2008 OS with me. Its pretty good to say the least.

Originally Posted by jaygeetee

2) Your machine at home can be compromised, more easily than a google server. Think of 10 years(5 maybe) down the line when your car would connnect to the internet, download your emails and read it out to you (Blue&Me anyone ) or your mobile phone replaces your computer for all internet work. Where you have a holographic 3D display that makes everything look super cool and trust me we are very close to seeing these days. In such cases you would like it better if you had all your info in the 'CLOUD' so you check in from everywhere, car, bus, office, home, garden and still access all of it. In some years, internet will be like electricity, ALWAYS ON (and we in India might have load shedding for that too)

.

I totally agree with you Jay.
Now I refer to a Time when they came out with OnStar, I had then purchased a Sprint EVDO data card. I thought of hooking it up to a Mac Mini and then installing it to my Car's LCD. Use a bluetooth dongle and get a Nokia E90 connected to it. At the end its your email, phone, browser, navigation etc etc on the go! dont you think there is a market for it Blue&Me, Onstar is an answer to that.

Similarly Google Chrome OS would sell like hot cakes. Why is airbook famous with frequent travellers? Lightweight solution to airpot surfing. If netbooks are out like it should have in 2007; frequent travelers would be the first ones to get it. Now i may not be referring to the market just in India.

Foleo is a classic example; Not sure why it got cancelled but i waited for it just like people waited for Iphone 3g. I took a day off from work to see its launch. $499 was all that was needed to get it.

In all I CAN"T Wait!