Random Insanity Alliance Forum, Mark V
Cactuar Zone => Random lnsanity => Topic started by: Kenneth Kenstar on February 09, 2011, 02:38:05 pm
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So, I've had mine for about two weeks now.
Hardware wise, it's cool by me. I'm not that hard to impress if you keep it simple and that's exactly what they did. They really simplified the keyboard, but kept what people are used to. Caps Lock is fucking gone and replaced with a New Tab key. The touchpad scroll sucks. It's not that I can't use it, it's just slow. It has no acceleration. It doesn't matter how fast you move your fingers down the touchpad, it isn't going to move any further down the page. I thought computers nailed this shit already, what the fuck is this?
Anyway, Page Up and Down are also gone, but that's okay because holding Alt turns the Up and Down directional keys into Page Up and Down. Whatever, as long as I have some way of moving through web pages like a crack addict running from the cops, I'm happy.
This thing has 3g and I've never used 3g before. It's so fucking cool. Google arranged a neat little 100 megs of bandwidth for free a month through Verizon Wireless. You can buy unlimited bandwidth for 10 dollars a day, or spend 20 dollars for a gigabyte for the month. Both plans have their usefulness.
If I'm in the middle of nowhere and I want to download some movies, the 10 dollars of unlimited bandwidth would be nice. The gigabyte would give me more than enough data to make and receive phone calls through the Google Voice for a month. I'll get back to Google Voice before the end of this topic.
Okay, let's talk about the meat. Chrome OS.
If anyone ever reads this crap I post, you'd know that I already love Chrome and I think Firefox sucks.
So, to make this easy, I'm going to compare Chrome OS to using Chrome with Windows/Linux/Mac.
First of all, I had no problem immediately having my bookmarks and extensions working fine with it. The first time I logged in, it was already ready for me to immediately browse. None of the extensions I use seem to have any problems.
Default Touchpad Settings of course had to go. I turned the sensitivity all the way up and disabled click to tap (I think I'm the only one who hates this and all my friends bitch me out when they use my computers, but I hate it.). Even though I turned the sensitivity all the way up, I still wish it was more sensitive.
I'm really surprised Google totally fucked up with this touchpad thing. It's basically a Macbook touchpad, which is cool, but this sensitivity thing is bumming me out. Maybe an update will make it more sensitive.
The next thing I have to bitch about is the sound. Here is where Google Voice comes into play. The audio is managed by Pulseaudio and I think the computer is just too slow to work with that. Pulseaudio is normally fine (I'm used to it in Ubuntu) and it really is a giant leap from stupid shit like ALSA.
Anyway, I love Google Voice and I wanted to use Google Voice with my Chrome OS. Here's the problem: When I make phone calls, Pulseaudio can't keep up with both recording and playing audio. It skips. Like a cellphone in a tunnel or something. So, a lot of time when I make phone calls, either I can't understand what they are saying or the person I'm calling can't understand what I'm saying.
Taking a look at top, I can see that Pulseaudio cranks up quite a bit in the CPU usage. When it does this, I can't do anything about it. It doesn't matter how many tabs or extensions I have, it kills the fuck out my poor CPU. It doesn't happen all the time, though. So I don't know what exactly triggers it. Sometimes I'll be able to have a conversation and watch a Youtube video at the same time.
Device support for the OS is...sketchy at best. Stuff you'd expect to work fine, will do bizarre things in Chrome OS. I have a USB headphone and microphone set. It's a pretty standard thing. It works fine out of the box in everything from an Windows XP install to a PS3.
Chrome OS seems to have the right idea about what the device is. It plays sound and shows up as a recording device. However, when I wear the headphones, I hear the wonderful soundtrack of a screaming Pulseaudio. Pulseaudio is being tortured by this OS. It begs for mercy as my ears bleed from the noise. No wonder it fucks my shit up, it's trying to escape a hellish nightmare.
So, I'll naturally unplug the headphones from the USB port and then my speakers join in in the choir of shitty sound drivers and a dying sound daemon.
I have to shut down the computer at this point to stop the havac. This is one reason this OS was built to use the Cloud though, right?
Some things that work in Chrome don't work in Chrome OS like video controls for certain video players and some javascript does funny things to it.
But, you know, after all that bitching, I can't stop myself from using the OS. I have gotten very used to the idea of surfing the web exclusively with the device. This has the added benefit of allowing my main laptop to have extra resources from not running Chrome all the time.
And as far as Google's plan on getting people to use this OS? I think people would. I think a lot of people would.
Old people in particular love the FUCK out of this Notebook. It's lightweight, has AMAZING battery life for a laptop, the keyboard being simplified makes it really easy to pick up, and the fact that it's just a web browser makes this something that can really be marketed to people who not only are advanced at surfing the web already, but people who have NEVER surfed the Internet can pick this up very easily.
I'm tired of typing. Maybe I'll type more later.
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Fucking HATE touch-click. My girl's satellite has it on, so does my Mom's work laptop, I've almost destroyed both. I'm probably getting a laptop once i move out, so chrome os intrigues me(If i reeeeally needed to play video games, the girlfriend is decked out for that, it's kind of losing its appeal with me) and I hope they exorcise the sound/device daemon it doesn't seem uncommon.
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I hate touch-click too.
I'd rather not get something with a keyboard that doesn't have a caps-lock key, though. I do some Dwarf Fortress modding once in a while and the mod files are like 90% caps.
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I hate touch-click too.
I'd rather not get something with a keyboard that doesn't have a caps-lock key, though. I do some Dwarf Fortress modding once in a while and the mod files are like 90% caps.
To be fair, this isn't a machine you'd mod Dwarf Fortress on.
But, at the same time, Shift seems to have a place for an LED that I have never been lit up before. I'm going to guess that it lights up when you hit a button combination that enables Caps Lock, but I am not sure what that combination may be.
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Oh yeah!
I forgot.
You can remap the keys on the keyboard to do different stuff. So, you CAN turn Caps Lock back into Caps Lock.
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It's apparently good enough to fuck up a war too.
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Excuse me, but unlike you, I actually bought my cruise missiles like a year ahead of time.
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And you're still an idiot for it! Go figure.
:troll:
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This is RI, not BitchAtMeHQ, so shut your fucking face you fucking COCKSUCKERSehn1
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I actually don't get why you got so much shit for sitting on 80 CMs. It doesn't cost THAT much, it get's people to undervalue your war-experience, and if someone is dumb enough to spy at them it saves you a nuke or 10m.
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To be honest, the game got really boring to me very quickly.
I wasn't involved in politics, and I don't need to explain why CN by itself fucking sucks hard.
So I just run my shit the way I want to and I don't give a fuck.
For example, right now I'm roleplaying the leader of a nation that is under anarchy by not logging in.
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"Sorry guys, on vacation"
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By the way, Google spent a lot of time stressing that Chrome is fast and that Chrome OS is supposed to be an OS without the bullshit - and that will make it Chrome Fast.
Honestly, it's almost deceptive advertising. It's just Linux and X with Chrome as a window manager. There is a lot of KDE stuff working in the background, so it's almost like they started with KDE ripped out every visible portion of it, but all the network managing, power suspension, and device management kind of stuff is still there. So, really, it almost seems like the only visible difference from this OS to another OS is that you are only allowed to run Chrome.
I guess that would make it faster, but that's like giving you a kitchen and saying "You can't start fires accidentally in this kitchen" and only letting people use the microwave.
Just like that scenario, this isn't entirely true, though. Just like you can have a short circuit in a microwave or accidentally fill it with 20 cans of bug spray, Chrome OS does actually start to get clunky after awhile. Like, after an hour of browsing pages, things start slowing down. This is probably because it's still in it's development stages and there are probably bugs and memory leaks and stuff like that.
But, you know, if Chrome OS wants to be Chrome Fast, it better get it's shit together.
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Google tends to be human in that respect though. The 'cool' thing is to release, stating it's done, when really it's a full-price beta. Then working their asses off to finish everything.
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Bump this is important