

Well, we've had a chance to have a quick and dirty snoop around Chrome OS and our early conclusions are rather predictable. This really is a browser with an OS attached rather than vice versa. You get your tab-based navigation up top, and the focus is of course on the internet, with minimal option buttons on the far right and app launchers at the top left. Unfortunately, in order to access the more interesting apps, one requires a Google.com login which we do not have, so we were stuck gazing at only the Gmail and Calendar applications. They act and function much like their online counterparts, but for the significant lag and choppiness that may be attributed to the still very early stage of development or the fact it's running on a virtual machine.









We didn't manage to find any bugs as such, aside from somehow losing the aforementioned pair of apps on our second login, but that could've just been due to our own fumbling with the VM software. One thoroughly pleasing thing to note is that the "machine" booted to the login screen in under 10 seconds, and we were ready to browse the web within another five -- quite a feat already, and if paired to an equally smooth and responsive experience inside the OS, this could completely obliterate quick-launching browsing software like Splashtop Rest assured we'll be doing our utmost to get access to the full, albeit still skeletal, Chrome OS experience, and as soon as we can take a look at the rest of the apps on offer, we'll do a more in-depth analysis. Stay tuned.