Google's Chrome OS, announced Tuesday, comes along with a little something that makes us gadget-freaks pretty excited: the monolithic, plain-black Cr-48, an Atom netbook that will be shipped to selected developers and others as part of Google's Chrome Pilot Program.

Just look at it. Normally Google's wares are utilitarian but plain, if not plain ugly. THe Cr-48, though, is gorgeous, coming on more like a stealth-fighter than a low-powered laptop.

The matte-black box contains a 12-inch screen, weighs 3.8 pounds and sports a full-sized keyboard. It will give 8 hours of use on a single charge and Google says it will boot in ten seconds, or resume from sleep instantly. There's a webcam, the trackpad looks like one of the giant pads found on Apple's MacBooks, and the netbook ditches the hard drive for flash memory. After all, who needs a lot of storage in a cloud-based OS, especially when the machine packs a global 3G radio along with its Wi-Fi?

But best of all, Google has killed the Caps Lock key, the weapon of comment-trolls the world over. No longer will these idiots be able to SHOUT THEIR DUMB OPINIONS without holding down an extra key. And the rest of us will no longer have to retype a sentence after accidentally engaging this vestigial annoyance. The key that usually functions as Caps Lock is still there, but has been reassigned: Pressing it will bring up the netbook's search function.

Google has also ditched the traditional row of function keys, replacing them with the media keys that most notebooks mix up with the function keys these days.

The unit itself is gorgeous. Over at our sister blog, Epicenter, you can find out about the new Chrome OS that it will run, as well as the Chrome Store, from my esteemed colleague Michael Calore. And if you want one of these hot machines? Bad luck, unless you get very, very lucky and are accepted for the pilot program.

With Chrome OS, Google Doubles Down on the Cloud [Epicenter]

Cr-48 Chrome Notebook [Google]

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