A few days ago I received a pretty new Google Chrome Notebook model CR-48. I was, completely caught off guard by a very nicely packaged device sitting the table when I got home. I still had no idea what I was because I forgot that I signed up for this program. Ecstatic doesn’t quite cut how happy I was when I discovered what it was. I was actually selected as a Google Chrome Notebook pilot user. I doubt this is a rare thing, however I almost never get selected to test stuff that I think is cool.
So far the experience has been pretty good. When I first booted the system, I had a bit of a hard time connecting to my wireless. I have a WRT-160N running DD-WRT with WPA2 AES/TKIP enabled. I reconfigured it to just TKIP and it seemed to work after that and then I was able to login and get the notebook updated. Pretty neat that EVERYTHING is handled under Chrome.
My wife said it’s the perfect computer for her. It’s small and light enough to take around the house and we pretty much use Google Docs exclusively for document creation and sharing. We both use Hulu for video’s, Picasa for photos and I use WordPress for blogging. I have not found a telnet/ssh client for the browser yet so I may take a stab at creating one or finding someone who can. Since I’m a network engineer, this is an essential function for me. I’m happy to see the Cisco ASA Clientless SSL VPN now supports Chrome as a browser since that will be my primary view into my work network.
I’ll put up some more posts as time goes on about the use of the Google Chrome Notebook CR-48.