6 thoughts on “A multi-purpose Google OS?”

1. I bought one of Ruslan Kogan’s “Agora” netbooks as an end of financial year tax reduction effort which cost $570 incl GST and courier delivery. It came with “gOS” pre-installed which is really just Ubuntu plus a bit of management stuff and some of google’s net gadgets. I’m finding it quite nice, not that I took a lot of convincing. gOS is not officially google approved, believe it or not, it’s the OS equivalent of fan-fiction written by someone who just liked google gadgets. I ended up deleting most of the google gadgets except for the cute little city in a glass globe that tells you what the weather is like outside (so much easier than looking outside).

   I will whinge that the system as delivered needed something of the order of 4G download in updates just to catch up with the Ubuntu bug-fixes (and that’s just staying with the pre-installed “Hardy” LTS version, not trying to jump to the latest experimental version). I can appreciate that it’s difficult for suppliers to hold stock and keep packages up to date but there’s going to be people who buy it and don’t think to run the updates. If it were a Microsoft system it would force the updates down your throat, which doesn’t impress me much either (twice I’ve seen people stuck at the end of a stressful late night session when someone had a Windows VIsta update in progress that left them too nervous to shut down their laptop).

   Fortunately I discovered that iiNet users are offered quota-free Ubuntu updates if they pick http://ftp.iinet.net.au from the list of available servers (and oddly it was up near the top of the list, suggesting that the system does a bit of network probing behind the scenes).

   Anyhow, in summary this is about the minimal laptop option that I can survive on as a day to day machine. Not long ago there was nothing like this in the market, every laptop was Microsoft, every laptop was over a thousand dollars and installing Linux was something you had to do for yourself. I see the availability of cheap pre-installed equipment as a major milestone. I can predict a very tough competitive year coming up in the computing market.

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2. In the last two months I’ve got myself a eeepc – the small screen one – no HD – but most other stuff for $250 brand new home delivered. I also got a Nokia E71 -$500. I have been meaning to get time to write my experiences up.

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3. Hard to believe that we have come to the point where phones are more expensive than computers!!

   Although of course one may as well call the E71 a computer.

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4. Personally I see this as a classic sign of Google entering a decadent phase. More “spaghetti strategy”: throw anything at the wall and see what sticks.

   This idea is straight out of the “NetPC” idea that was doing the rounds in the late 90s, followed by the similarly retarded “Internet Appliance” concept that killed a lot of startups in Bubble 1.0.

   It’s also a sign that coordination is breaking down. This project is not connected with another OS that Google have already built: Android. That’s wasted effort, right there. If I was a shareholder I’d be annoyed.

   Apple is a better-known brand in devices, has more cash on hand, has higher cashflow profits, specialises in computers, phones and music devices, has mature OS technology of multi-decade vintage and has thousands of programmers who do nothing but work on just that.

   Google has less money, less experience, far fewer people working on it and somehow they are the ones who will “beat” Microsoft? I find this … what’s the word? Laughable.

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5. There’s another difference between Google and Apple that you haven’t mentioned.

   Google are in it. Apple aren’t. Ergo Google’s chances of winning are immeasurably greater than Apple’s.

   Besides, NetPC was, at best, ‘before its time’. It seems like a pretty reasonable idea now, to me. What about it seems retarded to you?

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6. pat – I’ve whacked a 4gig micro SD card in my phone and carry data via usb, plus email, .pdf, excel, word, calendar, to do, google maps, net access, GPS, bike travel data (yes), etc.

   I’ve shoved my spare camera card in my eeepc and it now has an extra 2 gig.

   Briefly – the phone, with data plan or connection to the many deliberately free (macdonalds frinstance) or amazingly many unsecured wireless net connections, is a better investment, than the eepc for a lot of things. And I carry it on my belt everywhere (like Poncho and Lefty).

   Livin’ on the road my friend, is gonna keep you free and clean
   And now you wear your skin like iron, and your breath is hard as kerosene
   Weren’t you mamma’s only boy-oy, her favourite one it seems
   She began to cry when you said, good-bye, sank to your dream

   Poncho was a bandit boy, his horse was fast as polished steel
   He wore his gun outside his pants, for all the honest world to feel
   Poncho met his match, you know, on the deserts down in Mexico
   Nobody heard his dyin’ word, but that’s the way it goes

   All the Federales, they say
   They could have had him any day
   They only let him slip a-away
   Out of kindness I suppose

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