According to documents and pictures in FCC reports, a product with the code VCC111 was being tested. It was suggested that this new laptop is a 11.6-inch Chromebook by Sony, possibly running on ARM chipset. Why do we think it’s a Chromebook? Well, look at the keyboard, it has the Chrome-only keys. Photos of two versions, black and white, are found.
And the testing configuration comes with a Sony charger.
The reported chipset is a T25, which could mean anything but a guess is an ARM chip. Sony requested confidentiality for 180 days since 15 August 2011, meaning that this test device was born in last year and there may be a chance we could see it later this year. Could we see it in Google I/O this year? I would say highly possible.
I’m a proud user of Cr-48 Chromebook, this news today made me surprised. The coming stable update of Chrome OS, Release 19, will not appear on Cr-48s. This is the full announcement by Melissa Daniels, Google Chrome Community Manager:
We’ll be skipping the Chrome 19 update for CR-48 users due to platform considerations. To be clear, we’re still committed to supporting CR-48 devices. Samsung Series 5 and Acer AC700 Chromebooks will receive R19 and we’ll bring CR-48 devices back onto the release train after R19. In the meantime, CR-48s will continue to receive security and critical updates as necessary.
If you are on Stable on your CR-48, when the update for R18 hits stable, you will receive this and transition from R17 to R18. However, if you are currently on R18 (Beta or Dev on a CR-48) you will not see an update until we bring the CR-48s back onto the release train after R19.
I believe some new features of Chrome OS would be absent on Cr-48 due to its hardware limitations. I would say it is an expected result because Cr-48 is not a commercial product. However, what surprised me is the fact that Google will “bring CR-48 devices back onto the release train after R19“. What is the reason that R19 would not supported by Cr-48s while R20 would? Or does it mean that from this point onward Cr-48 will have its custom Chrome OS?
Samsung, one of the two Chromebook maufacturers, announced the new Series 5 Chromebook with new specs. The long-waited Chromebox was also confirmed to hit to market in Q2 2012.
The new Series 5 Chromebook has a different inside and outside. The casing is changed to aluminium, which makes it look like Macbook (in my opinion). It has a matt 12.1-inch 300-nit display. The processor is upgraded from Atom to Celeron despite the storage space is unchanged (still 16GB). The price for WiFi version would be sold at $399 while the 3G+WiFi will bear a $449 price tag.
I have been waiting for Chromebox for sooooooooo long, now it finally comes! Samsung said that the around $400 machine will have a wireless keyboard plus mouse package. It has an array of ports including USB 2.0, DVI, display and earphone socket.
You can view more photos of the new Chromebook here and Chromebox here.
2011 was a terrific year. I started this blog in March and wrote 368 posts, that is more than 1 post a day. I just did a little data mining to find out the most popular blogposts in the last year.
I definitely think that 2011 was the “year of social network”.
2011: The Year of Social Network
6 out of the top 10 posts are related to social networks. And the majority of them talks about Google Plus tips and tools. This is certainly not an objective truth about the social network market shares, but more due to my personal preference of writing about Google’s services and products (Google+, Chromebook, Chrome).
2011 was not the first year when social networks are invented. It is however the year when a major market player, Google+, was released and when different social networks received major changes to the user interface and features (e.g. Facebook and Twitter). We internet users are so eager to share, making social sites the hottest market in the IT field.
The popularity of social sharing will definitely continue to grow in 2012. If you count the time you spend on the internet, you would find that at least half (or mroe) of the time is spent on social sites.
You Like Chrome Themes? I Give You More.
A little surprise is that 3 Chrome theme review posts got into the top 10. I started introducing and reviewing Chrome themes to build a regular column on Sunday. It turned out that people like giving their Chrome browser a new look once in a while. An even greater surprise is that Japanese anime themes occupied position #3 on the top 10 list. I was not aware of the fact that there are so many Japanese anime fans in the English world.
Chrome themes would definitely be a major topic that I’ll write more in 2012. (BTW, the above is my favorite Chrome theme in 2011)
Mobile Internet Devices
#9 goes to Chromebook vs Android Tablet: Does Touch UI Matter?, a blog post that I compared my Chromebook and my 7″ tablet. I am not sure how you people categorize these two kinds of machines, but I’ll take them as “mobile internet devices” (what an old school term by the way). I said “internet” instead of “computer” because I believe most tablet uses surf the web and use apps to connect to the internet (Facebook, YouTube, emailing…). Chromebook is certainly even more web-centric.
To me, the reason I use Chromebook and tablet is they are fast and direct routes to the internet. Besides, they are lightweight and not power-demanding. Unlike my Macbook that I have to charge the battery everyday, my Chromebook could last for a week given approximately the same usage.
Obviously all IT giants know about this, so Apple has already released iPad and produced the smallest Macbook Air (only 11″). Google is said to have their own branded android tablet this year. Amazon also has Kindle Fire that rocked the market.
Summary
This is a wrap up of what my readers liked the most in 2011. I will be writing more about these topics in Cloud High Club. Are you one of the “social-network-Chrome-theme-mobile-internet-device”-holic?
Google just announced new education and corporate plans for Chromebook. Customers can pay for a whole year upfront:
Education:
1-Year Upfront: $449 (Wi-Fi), $519 (3G)
Years 2-3: $5/month per Chromebook for management & support
Business:
1-Year Upfront: $559 (Wi-Fi), $639 (3G)
Years 2-3: $13/month per Chromebook for management & support
Google said this change is made in response to some customers’ needs:
Over that time we’ve learned a lot about what they need to make this device a great fit in their organizations. One piece of feedback we’ve heard from some customers is that they work with yearly budget cycles. To meet these customers’ needs, in addition to our 3-year subscription model, today we are introducing an alternative payment option… after the first year, customers can choose to pay a monthly fee for years two and three for management console access and support.
Google also enhanced the web-based management panel to add new features including group policy management, shipment tracking and asset management.
As a Kindle user, I’m so excited to see the announcement of Kindle Fire, Amazon’s latest 7″ multi-touch color tablet. It is slim, ultralight and most importantly, give users a shortcut to the cloud at anytime and anywhere. The best of all, Kindle Fire is only $199, a truly bargain price for an Android tablet.
Amazon Silk: A Cloud-accelerated Browser on Kindle Fire
The most impressive thing about Kindle Fire is Amazon Silk, the built-in browser of this tablet. Amazon claims that Silk is much faster than other browsers due to the support of the cloud.
Every time there is a page request Silk determines what tasks to be handled by the tablet and what data to be processed by the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) server, taking into consideration factors such as network status and page complexity. And Amazon said that they had peered with major internet service providers and top web sites, so many of the web pages you browse actually has a cached copy on Amazon’s server. This shortens the loading time of web pages.
Besides, Amazon’s server learns from billions of web sites so that it can push associated content to the tablet, without having to wait until the whole page has been loaded to determine what to download. This again accelerates the whole loading process.
This is not the first time we see similar technologies. For example, SKyFire is a browser that converts flash content into iPhone compatible format before pushing the content to iPhone, to make iPhone “flash-enabled”. This is a clever design because the iPhone hardware may be incapable to process the data.
Watch this video for an in-depth (5 mins+) explanation of Silk:
Amazon Content with Free Cloud Storage
Kindle Fire fully utilizes the rich content pool of Amazon (the existing Instant Video and MP3). There are over 100,000 movies and TV shows and 17 million songs users can enjoy on Kindle Fire. Besides, Amazon released color digital publications including magazines, books and children books.
The huge collection of content is stored on Amazon’s server for free, meaning that users can “buy” the contents without having to spent any local disk space for storage. Only when needed the contents are streamed or downloaded to the tablet.
Again, this is not a completely new concept. Since the first generation Kindle, Amazon keeps all books I bought online, I can delete the local copy and re-download at anytime. Now Amazon pushes this forward to all other multimedia content.
And with the Whispersync technology, Amazon keeps track of your reading and watching progress. If you finished playing 25 minutes of a TV show, when you switch on Kindle Fire, it plays from the 26th minute onward. This is a truly remarkable design that brings convenience to users.
Summary: The Cloud on Hand
Cloud High Club is not a gadget blog, I’ll leave the many other attractive features of Kindle Fire to you to explore on Amazon. I simply want to point out that Amazon truly “invented” a product that effectively integrates the cloud with a tablet. Not to mention the rich multimedia content that Amazon brings.
Why? Although there are many tablets (iOS and Android) out there, that all “connect” to the internet. On the other hand, I have the impression that Kindle Fire is built to “utilize” the net. It’s like a simple terminal that delivers the best of the internet contents to users. To a certain extent this matches the belief behind Chromebooks. And Kindle Fire is slim (0/45″ or 11.4mm thick) and light (14.6 ounces or 413 grams). It truly makes the cloud portable while enjoyable.
If you are a heavy web user who enjoys watching and listening to multimedia content, reading books and games, Kindle Fire is a must-have tablet. Of course, it’s not a truly Android tablet, since the OS is custom-tweaked to run Amazon Apps only. Perhaps users would soon find out that Fire could be “androidized” as easily as for Nook. But even running the stock OS, I could see huge potential of Kindle Fire being a killer cloud-centric tablet.
According to Digitimes, Google plan to adopt Intel Core i series CPU on the next generation Chromebooks. This shift from Intel Atom N570 processors is believed to aim at performance enhancement. It was reported that Google has already secured a 10-20% discount for related quotes. Besides, it was suggested that apart from Samsung and Acer, other notebook manufacturers including Taiwanese company Asus, would be joining the Chromebook family and were set to launch products after fourth quarter.
Google Chromebooks have been a hot-selling product as we learnt from Amazon. However, there have also been complains that while they are designed for light internet use, the price tag is a bit higher than mainstream Windows netbooks. The anticipated hardware upgrade is believed to make the Chromebook family more attractive to customers.
Google just released a new video in YouTube about using Chromebooks in classroom. This video reviews how Chromebooks from Google are used by students with special needs in KIPP Academy of Opportunity.
I think Chromebook has a way simpler user interface than traditional operation systems. No matter students, elderly, housewives or ordinary people, everyone should find it easy to learn and use.
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