Google Chrome

Google just revealed more than 1,000 schools have adopted Chromebooks in classrooms, and it is now working with DonorsChoose.org to “help budget-strapped classrooms across the country.”

DonorsChoose is an online charity that, as Google coined it, connects public school classroom to donors, and the Google partnership will subsequently allow teachers to request the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook at a discount price of $99. The special price is only for the holiday season and includes hardware, management, and support.

Google explained the details on the official Google blog:

If you’re a full-time public school teacher in the U.S., visit DonorsChoose.org and follow the instructions to take advantage of this opportunity by December 21, 2012. Your request will be posted on DonorsChoose.org where anyone can make a donation to support your classroom. When you reach your funding goal, you’ll receive your Chromebooks from Lakeshore Learning, DonorsChoose.org’s exclusive fulfillment partner for this program.

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Chromebooks may finally be getting voice recognition. Google Plus user François Beaufort discovered (via CNET) references to Google Now in the latest Chromium build yesterday that said “creating a skeleton for Google Now for Chrome implementation.” It’s not clear how long it will take for the new feature to roll out, but the code hints to Google Now’s features appearing in Google Chrome’s notification cards.

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TL;DR: This is the first Chromebook effort that fulfills the ChromeOS mission: good quality, excellent (MacBook Air-like) design, low cost and functional, and easy to use. It won’t replace a mid-high end machine, but, for people with basic needs or who want an inexpensive second computer, this is a no brainer at $250.

Background:

Google’s Android and ChromeOS  represent two different visions of the future of computing from inside the same company. The Android vision is a touch-enabled platform with apps that has been in vogue since the iPhone was released in 2007. The ChromeOS is the realization of the decades-old network client computer—which is just a browser as a user interface for a bunch of cloud services.

Android has clearly been popular on both phones and now tablets, but Chrome sales have been pretty lackluster until now. From my point of view, that’s due to a couple of reasons. For one, the devices, made by Samsung and Asus, were lackluster in speed compared to the Windows and Mac counterparts. ChromeOS devices should be faster than comparably equipped Macs and PCs because there is no overhead—it is just a browser. Yet the CR-48 and again with the second-generation Chromebooks weren’t noticeably faster than cheap netbooks. That’s the other problem: Chromebooks weren’t cheap – compared to similarly specced PCs, anyway. Often, you’d be able to find a cheaper Windows PC on sale that otherwise was the same or better.

So, to break it down: Chromebooks were overpriced and slow (and the design wasn’t very inspired).

Then came the third generation…

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According to reports out of Asia, Mountain View-based Google will unveil its own-branded 12.85-inch touch laptop powered by its Chrome OS at the end of 2012. Details are scant this morning on what embodies the device; however, a report from Commercial Times said 20 million units are on tap. A Taiwanese-based company, named Compal Electronics, will be responsible for the overall production, while Wintek will supply the touch panels for the laptop.

Traditionally, Google’s approach to Chrome OS —or any of its software—has been to distribute it to various OEMs for production. Google has never manufactured its own product on a large scale, as the Nexus Q was the only one, and it wasn’t even shipped to the mass-market, but that won’t be the case with its latest Chrome OS device.

Samsung and Acer have released past iterations of Chrome OS. While the overall success of the platform is not really known, Chrome OS products are sold in larger stores like Best Buy. Google pitches Chrome OS as the solution “for everyone.” Just maybe a touch-enabled laptop could strike the fancy of some users looking to ditch their traditional devices.

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Google released the latest beta release of Chrome today, with the Chrome 24 beta for Windows, Mac, and Linux. On top of claiming this is the fattest release yet, Google shared Octane JavaScript benchmark scores that show the browser has become 26 percent faster since last year’s release of Chrome 15.

With today’s Chrome Beta channel release, Chrome continues to get faster, as you can see in this chart which shows Octane scores. Octane is a JavaScript benchmark we designed to measure performance of real-world applications on the modern web. Stability sometimes takes higher priority, but we’re still manic about improving Chrome’s speed

Google also highlighted some of the other areas it’s improving in Chrome including enhancements to Google Cloud Print server-side and work to minimize wait times:
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Googler Ami Fischman, a self-dubbed “Watt Wrangler”, just announced a new battery-saving Chrome Stable release.

“We recently enabled GPU-accelerated video decoding for Chrome on Windows,” wrote Fischman on the official Google Chrome blog. “Dedicated graphics chips draw far less power than a computer’s CPU, so using GPU-accelerated video decoding while watching videos can increase battery life significantly.”

Fischman noted test results show batteries last 25 percent longer with GPU-accelerated video decoding switched on. So now, Chrome users on Windows can watch more YouTube videos, as Fischman noted, without worrying about dwindling battery life.

Chrome users can even access website permissions, such as geolocation, much more easily with the new release:

This saves you from having to dig through settings pages to find these permissions. Now, simply click on the page/lock icon next to a website’s address in the omnibox to see a list of permissions and tweak them as you wish.

This latest release also includes an option to send a “do not track” request to websites and web services. The effectiveness of such requests is dependent on how websites and services respond, so Google is working with others on a common way to respond to these requests in the future.

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Google launched its new ARM-powered Chromebook last week with two years of 100GB Google Drive storage and 12 Gogo in-air, Wi-Fi passes for free, and it even published FAQ pages so folks could access the perks in just a few quick steps.

Here’s how to claim the 100GB of Google Drive storage:

1. Log into your Chromebook (ARM-powered Chromebook, Samsung Chromebook Series 5 550, or Samsung Chromebox Series 3 only).
2. Update to to the latest version of Chrome OS (Chrome OS 23 required).
3. Go to the Google Drive offer page, and the 100GB will soon load in your account (Google will verify the Chrome OS device—only one deal per Google account).

More details are available at Google’s Goodies page.

The steps for Gogo passes are below.

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Image via <a href="//www.engadget.com">Engadget</a>

According to a listing on Amazon and Samsung’s website, a 3G version of the new Chromebook is also available for $329.99. When the latest Chrome OS laptop was announced yesterday, there was no mention. However, it is now available for all to pre-order. Besides 3G technology, specs remain the same on the Chromebook. It packs an 11.6-inch screen, 16GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, and Bluetooth. Like the previous versions of the Chromebook, the new 3G version will be bundled with two free years of 100MB of data per month from Verizon. [The Verge]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=S95J5BowMmk

Google just announced some extremely aggressive-priced Samsung Chromebooks starting at $249 at major U.S. retailers:

The new Chromebook is a great computer at any price, but it’s an incredible computer at $249. It’s one of the lightest laptops on the market. You can easily carry it around all day—it’s 2.5 pounds, a mere 0.8 inches thick, with more than 6 hours of battery life for the typical user. And with 100 GB of free storage on Google Drive*, you can get to all of your stuff anytime, anywhere.

Even with its compact design, it’s packed with performance—it boots up in less than 10 seconds and resumes instantly. High-resolution videos (in 1080p) are beautiful to watch and when using the touchpad, you’ll notice smooth scrolling due to a hardware-accelerated user interface. And as you‘d expect from a Chromebook, it’s easy to share with others. Everyone—mom, dad, grandparents, tech lovers, tech haters—can have separate accounts where all of their stuff is kept safe. Finally, if you’re an active Google user of products like Gmail, Drive, Search, Maps, YouTube, Play or Google+ Hangouts, everything just works seamlessly.

The new Chromebook weighs a little less than 2.5 pounds, but it boasts the same 6.5-hour battery life. The screen, however, is 0.5-inches smaller with a 1,366-by-768-pixel resolution. The most notable difference in Google’s thinner Chromebook is the Samsung Exynos 5250 dual-core processor inside, and it features a Cortex-A15 chip that reportedly runs 1080p video and ChromeOS pretty well. GigaOm’s Kevin C. Tofel even noted the overall performance is “comparable to the Intel-powered Chromebook I have, but perhaps a half-step behind; at least in my few hours of using the device.”

This is finally a compelling offer at $249—as long as the hardware is fast. It looks like a base-line MacBook Air (and will surely draw criticism for that) for a quarter of the price. Again, so long as it performs, I don’t think Google will have a problem selling them to its intended audience: grandparents, kids, and as second or third computers for those who are heavy Google service users, and companies that need cheap mobile workstations.

Update: More reviews are starting to come in and unfortunately many are complaining about slowness. Not surprising for a $249 machine but clearly not for power users.

A gallery is below.

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[tweet https://twitter.com/nerderk/status/256020893275414529]

As Google has done with past updates to its products, it appears to be testing a redesigned version of its mobile homepage with a small group of users. A 9to5Google reader noticed the change on Android. There were also reports of iOS users noticing a new UI. As highlighted in the image above, the updated Google mobile website includes a redesigned top toolbar that looks similar to the desktop version. The redesigned toolbar also provides access to a slide-out sidebar that contains quick links to all of Google’s services as opposed to a top bar containing just a few tabs for “Images”, Maps”, “Places”, “more”, etc. The toolbar provides links to the “Web” and “Images”, as well as Google+ notifications and profile information. It is possible Google will push the redesigned UI to all users soon.

In partnership with CIT, Google announced on its Official Enterprise Blog today that it would roll out a new Chromebook rental program as a trial. The month-to-month rentals, starting at $30 for a Chromebook and $25 for a Chromebox, will be available to organizations and come with full 24/7 support and a three-year limited warranty. Google noted there is no commitment required and the costs decrease each year depending on the terms of the rental. The company also announced it would make volume purchases for up to 10 ChromeBooks available to Google Apps customers:

Imagine you’re setting up shop for a local political campaign and will have an influx of new, temporary workers. You can rent a Chromebook for each worker for the next few months, and return them when the campaign is over. Chromebooks meet the needs of most workers, making this rental program a great option for companies with seasonal workers, larger organizations who want to pilot Chromebooks, fast-growing startups and any company looking to preserve cash.

The full details on the rental solutions being offered through CIT are below. 
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Over on the Chrome Blog today, Google highlighted some of the new features in this week’s stable release of Chrome OS with the most notable being a redesigned apps list that includes an omnibox search bar at the top:

Notably, we made the apps list much more compact, so you can access your apps without interrupting your browsing experience. We also added a search box at the top of the apps list, which you can use like an omnibox to search the web, specific websites, or the apps on your computer.

Other improvements included in the release: custom wallpapers, a redesigned Cloud Print dialog, and the ability to save files directly to your Google Drive. Google also noted the release includes”audio support for USB and HDMI, additional sandboxing security features, and many more bug fixes.”
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You may have already noticed, but Google’s latest Olympic-related doodle on the homepage is an interactive HTML5 game that celebrates hurdle races. Users can notably pair a USB-powered gamepad, keyboard, or mouse to control the game’s runner and to help him conquer the track’s hurdles.

Google revealed in a Google+ post today (screenshot below) that the doodle “makes use of the brand-new Gamepad API, which uses JavaScript to read the state of any gamepad controller attached to your computer, and which was just added to Chrome last week.”

Check it out: Google.com

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Google’s Chrome has been on quite the tear lately after it took over as the world’s top browser for a short bit in May and all of June. Well it looks like Chrome has hit another noteworthy accomplishment, according to StatCounter. The browser out of Mountain View now holds one-third of the entire browser market—certainly something to be proud of. The accomplishment was hit in June, when Chrome took 33.8-percent share, including a 10.7-percent year-over-year growth. To compare, Internet Explorer sat at a competitive 32 percent share and Firefox sat at 23.7-percent during the same month. Surprisingly, Apple’s Safari only had a measly market share of 7.1-percent. [StatCounter via The Next Web]

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For those who like to watch TV while browsing the web on their Chromebooks, or at least the Chrome Browser on Mac/PC, there is now a Google TV remote extension.

Install it here.

As first reported by Chrome Story, owners of newer Chromebooks and Chromeboxes might soon get their hands on more cloud storage…for free. According to references discovered in Chromium OS code, the storage increase will most likely come soon in the way of Google Drive Google currently makes 5 GB available free to users for storing files and documents.

According to the code reference “553 GDATA_WELCOME_TITLE_ALTERNATIVE: ‘Get 100 GB free with Google Drive’,” it sounds very likely that users will be able to receive 100 GB of cloud storage for free. That is definitely useful, especially considering most Chrome OS devices only have 16 GB of local storage. We will let you know when the 100 GB goes official.

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Google told us during its Google I/O keynote that it would bring Chromebooks to 100 Best Buy stores in the United States in the near future. Today, customers tipped TechCrunch that in-store displays for the Chromebooks finally started popping up in Best Buy retail locations. One interesting aspect of the displays is a rack of CDs loaded with the Chrome browser being offered to customers for free. However, we are not sure how many users this will actually convert. In a blog post on his Google+ account, the customer described the CDs and provided the screenshots above:

One thing I was most surprised about was the free +Google Chrome CDs. The CDs were in really cool plexi-glass cases held together by magnets. The Chrome Expert also gave us the cool idea of using the case as a picture frame after we were done using the CD. I think it is a great idea for Google to use their Chromebook’s placement in Best Buy stores to also spread the goodness about Chrome.

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The folks at iFixit recently took a look inside Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, and today they are ripping apart another new Nexus device: the Nexus Q media streaming, Apple TV competitor. We already told you all about Google’s reasoning behind manufacturing the device just 15 minutes away from its United States headquarters, but iFixit wanted to find out exactly what parts came from where.

There was nothing too shocking in the teardown, but iFixit was able to identify the origin of many components. As noted in the report, “it’s nearly impossible to have a truly American-made electronic device.” Here is what it found:

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