Google Chrome OS To Launch Within A Week

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Google Chrome OS To Launch Within A Week

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Google’s Chrome OS project, first announced in July, will become available for download within a week, we’ve heard from a reliable source. Google previously said to expect an early version of the OS in the fall.

What can we expect? Driver support will likely be a weak point. We’ve heard at various times that Google has a legion of engineers working on the not so glamorous task of building hardware drivers. And we’ve also heard conflicting rumors that Google is mostly relying on hardware manufacturers to create those drivers. Whatever the truth, and it’s likely in between, having a robust set of functioning drivers is extremely important to Chrome OS’s success. People will want to download this to whatever computer they use and have it just work.
We expect Google will be careful with messaging around the launch, and endorse a small set of devices for installation. EEE PC netbooks, for example, may be one set of devices that Google will say are ready to use Chrome OS. There will likely be others as well, but don’t expect to be able to install it on whatever laptop or desktop machine you have from day one. Google has previously said they are working with Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba on the project.


We’ve seen convincing and not so convincing screenshots of Chrome OS over the last several months. The good news is the speculation is about to end, and you can try it out yourself. If you have one of the supported devices, that is.
 

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Update:

Google Chrome OS event planned for Thursday

As reported a few days ago, rumors had circulated that Google was planning to release part of their forthcoming Google Chrome OS sometime this week. Google has now sent out notifications that there is an OS event scheduled for this Thursday morning at their Mountain View, California headquarters.

While a partial launch of the Chrome OS could still be planned, all indications from Google are that this Thursday's event will show off demos and offer a "complete overview" of the new operating system, which is scheduled to launch sometime in 2010.

Google's Vice President of Product Management, Sundar Pichai and Google Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS, Matthew Papakipos will be speaking at the event. After the event, a Questions and Answer session will be available for those in attendance to pick Google's brain about its upcoming operating system.

The Chrome OS event begs the question, if Google is demonstrating a "complete overview" of the Chrome OS, how much longer will it be before it's released to the public?
 

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Google releases Chrome OS information & source code

Google's Chrome OS has been a rather interesting project for many people as of late; it was said to be an operating system that was based in the "cloud", stored mostly online, though nobody knew any exact details. Today, Google has explained more about the OS, clearing things up.

As posted on the official Google blog, Chrome OS is "all about the web." As such, it is web-based, and as Google states, "The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs." Whilst this sounds handy, keep in mind that it won't run on any old hardware, but rather it will be given a specific hardware reference. This means, according to Engadget, that regular hard drives are out of the question; Chrome OS is an SSD only deal. It will also support both x86 and ARM hardware. While this sounds bad, keep in mind the project is open source as of this very moment, so it'll no doubt show up on a range of other computers.

for pix: Google releases Chrome OS information & source code
 
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