Google's CR-48 apparently shipping again

Reports are trickling that Google has begun shipping the CR-48 to eager testers who have thus far been empty-handed.There have been a few claims by a number of members in the CR-48 Chromebook forum that they received their CR-48 Chromebooks within the last week. These individuals applied for the Pilot program in December last year

how Could it be? Is the plucky prototype Chrome OS laptop getting a stay of execution after being declared all dried up back in March? That's pretty unlikely, given the impending release of the Samsung and Acer netbooks that we saw announced during Google I/O. This is all quite bizarre as we’re quite sure that Google made it clear that no more free chromebooks will be shipping. It seems a lot more plausible that the company is just exhausting the supply, so if you signed up late last year and haven't received one yet, we wouldn't recommend holding your breath.A tweet by Sundar Pichai in March this year seemed to clarify Google’s stance:

    "Sorry we have shipped all units for now. Thanks for your interest and we will have partner devices out mid-year."

Lets Take A Look CR-48


Positives


• Fantastic battery life (8-10 hours, up to a week on standby)


• Simple to set up, with all extensions and settings synced with Chrome sync


• Powers on or wakes up when you open the lid


• Incredibly fast to sleep/wake up
                                                                                        
• Guest mode (whole session in incognito mode)


• Works for anyone with a Google account


• Small and easy to carry around (could be lighter)


• Keyboard shortcuts (with help screen shown below)


•100MB a month free for 2 years with Verizon broadband


• Stays cool


• Even the safety instructions have a sense of humor

Negatives


• No page up/down, home/end, or delete buttons requiring awkward shortcuts


• No function keys (like F2 to rename, F11 for full screen, F3 for next item in search)


• Touchpad is crap, making right-click, drag and drop and text selection unreliable and awkward.


• Wifi slow to reconnect when waking up


• Wifi antenna strength mediocre (direct line of site to router, still missing a bar)


• I miss local apps like Power calculator, notepad++, iDailyDiary, Keepass, Linkman, Autohotkey


• Performance is sluggish (especially with flash)


• No vertical tabs


• No 24 hour time (only AM/PM)






Conclusion


Many of the negatives are issues with the hardware, not the OS, and being a prototype, that’s to be expected. Many of these problems will probably not exist in the finished product. The second category of complaints is being forced to use the cloud for every little thing. I use the cloud a lot, but I still have several essential local apps. A killer solution would be to allow a hybrid of local apps along with the cloud. I have heard rumors that Chromium will be able to run native apps through the browser. If that happens, I could see myself using Chrome OS permanently. As it stands, the CR-48 is great for checking email and RSS feeds, letting my kids play Starfall or a quick search online. It doesn’t fit my typical workflow for text editing, image manipulation and development, but this could change as Chrome apps mature. I look forward to seeing how it improves in the next 12 months.