CR-48: A Portable HTPC?

Yes, I can watch a bunch of "Dog Whisperer" episodes!

Connect Your CR-48 To Your TV

There's a VGA port, a USB slot, and sound output; all that you need to enjoy some videos on a bigger screen! Okay, so you technically only just need a VGA port to get the output onto the TV, but a wireless keyboard and speakers could help enhance this experience.

The one issue I was first worried about when I first connected the VGA I took a look at the keyboard of the CR-48 and said, "ok...now how do I change the display?". Luckily Google put that keyboard shortcut map (ctrl + alt + /) so I can find out about the display toggle key combination: ctrl + fullscreen

What Apps Are There?

Check out Clicker.TV! Honestly, I knew about this app once the Chrome App Store opened up and have been using it ever since. So, just think about all the videos available on the internet. Now think of [a lot of] that content being aggregated into one repository that you can browse/search. Pretty rad eh?

Now, I'm not saying all videos are free, but there is a large collection of older TV shows available for free (just found Macgyver last night
!), independent shows/movies, and of course web-only videos. You'll also find videos listed via iTunes, Amazon, Comcast, et cetera, those obviously are the ones that you'll either need to pay for or have an account.

We do not have cable television at home, so another medium to play videos is very appealing. --Yes, you have read that correctly, NO CABLE; only those basic channels that you get over-the-air for free.

Another nice one is Crackle. It's got "Final Fantasy" the movie! And of course a bunch of other things in it's repository. I haven't had time to play with Crackle too much, but they seem to have a nice selection!

Wish List

VLC Media Player please! I can't seem to find an app out there that has the ability to play local video files yet. This would be awesome!

DLNA Support We have a PS3, a NAS that supports DLNA, and even my desktop running PS3 Media Server. If the CR-48 had DLNA support, I would be able to access all of my media files on my network too!

Post Scripts & Cruft

Plugging in my USB keyboard/mouse made my navigation much easier! I have a wireless keyboard & mouse (trackpad) combo (usually connected to the PS3 or my laptop when we connect it to the TV). Being able to sit down on my couch and just navigate is always a great thing to have. But the best part was being able to have physical left & right mouse clicks!

I've mentioned this before, but the battery life on the CR-48 is simply amazing! I currently have my Dell Latitude D430 on as well and I only had maybe one hour of battery life (fully charged). Yes, I've had the D430 for a while now, but I don't ever recall having such as good a battery life as the CR-48.

Cheers!

CR-48 Images

I'm still trying to figure out how to upload images into Picassa. I technically cheated; I copied images from my phone to the Downloads directory (/home/chronos/user/Downloads) and then and only then was I able to upload using Picassa. That's rather annoying!


The infamous box that we've all seen around the internet many a times.


The screen you see after flipping the "developer" switch.

CR-48 Day 2: New Perspective

Okay, so another day using Chromium; my frustrations really had me worried about the success of this OS. I'm still technically not completely sold on this browser-based OS, but hey, I think it's beginning to grow on me a little.

Who Is the Intended Audience?

I sat back thinking, "wow this is frustrating! I'm an engineer, I know how things work, but this just isn't working for me." But this is new technology; there's always that learning period that you need to get passed and alas, I think I've got it now.

I believe Chromium is advertised as a netbook OS right? Well, I guess that's it then; an OS where you can have the ability to do some internet browsing, watch some videos, and et cetera lightweight processing.

Apps Galore!

"Apps" you ask? Yes, that's right install Chrome Apps and play around with things; that's exactly what I did. I found a lot of useful things (and a lot of non-useful things). But being that this OS is basically a giant Chrome browser, what else am I to do?

But, what's the difference between some of these apps and just browsing to these sites? That, well I'm not exactly sure to be honest. I just found it awfully helpful to be able to click on an icon in my menu, rather than navigating my bookmarks. --also, keep in mind that some apps do have the ability to break out of the chrome browser window (google talk, eBuddy).

Now, why go with this apps approach? Well, if you own a smartphone, you obviously know that this approach has been awfully successful in marketing different software to a wide range of people. So why not?

Stupeflix has a pretty neat app that you can create different videos using their templates.


Heck, I even found a digital recording studio app by the folks at Aviary. I made a short test last night inspired by StrongBad's "techno song" and well, I was awfully surprised to find how detailed it was (for Pro Tools users, check it out, you'll be surprised). As for a guy who still records on a Tascam 4-track (yes, with the cassette tapes), this is a very useful app for me.

Updates and Ramblings

I'm slowly adapting to this mouse. I still can't get the hang of right-clicking, but at least now I am navigating well.

I did a little bit of work using the CR-48. Nothing too difficult since all I need is a shell to do work.

Since I found a couple of web-based video apps, I'm gonna try hooking the notebook up to my TV see how that experience is. Is the CR-48 really a HTPC in disguise?

Til next update, cheers!

CR-48 1st Day Frustrations

Frustrated

Yea, that is how I feel right about now. I didn't think it would matter, but the lack of physical mouse buttons is rather annoying; and I'm not the only one! While browsing sites, I like to do the "right-click and open in new tab" thing. The way you right click here is rather annoying! I honestly don't know how the Macheads live without mouse buttons! --right-click is it still a ctrl+click?

Gone With The Flash

Wow, so I know Linux + Flash hasn't been the greatest of combinations for quite some time, but a lot has changed in the later years. So, the libflashplayer.so crashed and chrome didn't like it; okay that's fine and all if I could only do anything about it! I had mouse and keyboard functionality, but if I clicked anything in Chrome, nothing would work. Luckily, I had a shell open and I could run commands. I tried to kill some chrome instances, but then nothing was happening. I ended up rebooting from the shell and now I can work.

What caused the Flash-Crash?
I'm not sure, it happened twice now and the first time I thought it was caused by a website, but I also noticed that I installed the eBuddy Messenger app and that seemed to have been the issue. So, perhaps not really a Google bug, but nonetheless if bad code can bring the whole system to a hault, then Google needs to do a better job at jailing its processes. --I thought Chrome did jail its flash processes?

Circling back to my mouse complaints, I've noticed that when I type I like to rest my wrists down on the laptop. The mouse sometimes catches that and then my cursor moves somewhere else and I start making typos all over.

All Is Not In the Negative

On a much happier note, the boot time and sleep/awake time is amazing! I've read that it was fast, but wow, I am impressed. Kudos Team Chrome!
Also, I am more than impressed with the battery life of this machine. I'm curious what the "official" battery time is...

Personal, Yet Slightly Related Tangent

I finally realized that receiving the CR-48 last night was also due to the fact that the moon, Earth, and sun were aligned!

CR-48 Webcam Quality Youtube Test

I guess you can say that I don't use youtube enough to realize that you can upload direct-from-webcam videos. Anyhow, since there is a webcam set up in this CR-48, I decided to test it out. --I technically wanted to try and upload the short video I made of the CR-48, but I can't seem to be able to see my files! (I inserted an sdcard.)



Also, as a brief update; I found out a couple more helpful things for the CR-48. It has a physical switch that you can toggle into "developer mode". W00t!

Yes, it is possible to get into a shell! The folks over at Chromeoslounge.com have a thread going that dropped a hint.
Terminal:Ctrl+Alt+T
Then, you can toggle between Chrome and the terminal via Alt+1|2

Terminal first brings you up in this "crosh" shell. You can run shell to get more functionality. Running a simple sudo su will let you gain root!

Also, looks like it's possible to get Ubuntu installed as well, but I'll hold off for now as I promised to test out Chrome Os.

So as long as I've got my shell I'm happy. I can even work, with the exception of email (though, I can just do webmail).

I know I promised pictures, but I would like to try and figure out how to upload files directly from the sdcard on this machine. --Mounting my NAS would even be better. Yes, I can mount the sdcard, but no, I can not see it even if I symlink it to the Downloads directory.

Still testing... but happier than before!

Quick Notes:
Keyboard shortcuts ctrl+alt+/
Terminal ctrl+alt+t
Toggle between Chrome and Shell(s) alt+[1...n] /*works as a stack and your latest shell will be alt+2; your oldest shell will be alt+n*/

A Present? For Me?!

So, yes, yes, I know I haven't written anything in quite a long time, but hey, lots of work at the workplace and at the household.

Anyhow, I am throwing up a quick pablum announcing such exciting news! So, as I type on this laptop, I am one of the lucky ones to be able to test out Google's CR-48 (my typing instincts just tried to look for the non-existant* CAPS lock key and opened a tab instead).

So today, I received a package that didn't show what company it was from. I open it up and I read something about a "lithium battery" and then it clicks! "Aha! I was picked to test out Google's Chromium OS!" (I just hit the "search" button looking for the CAPS lock again!) This will be exciting, I start this testing with an open-mind and feeling awfully anxious.

First thoughts...
So, if you've read this far I'm sure you might be able to tell, that the keyboard is a little bit annoying for me. I believe I read some post about the CAPS lock being some sort of feature that I can enable (maybe)? The mouse is a bit odd as well (not that I need it). I never did like the Mac one-button-mouse setup. --I can adjust.

Boot-time! Whoa! It's like the folks at Google wanted to seriously give the "wow effect" on people as soon as I put in the battery and opened up the laptop, it surprised me with booting itself up and wow, I wish I had a video of it so I can see how fast it was! Amazing!

That's it thus far. I took the usual "new toy" pics, so I'll post them up soon. Hmmm...just noticed there's no "home|end|del" buttons?! Anyhow, stay tuned for updates!

Cheers!

(I just hit the "search" button again instead of the...well, you know!)
P.S. I need a shell, can I assume there's an app for that? ;-)

*The CAPS lock is actually the "search" button.

UPDATE: (yes, I just used the CAPS lock) THANK YOU! Chromestory.com showed me the way to change the search key into my CAPS lock. --I knew I read it was possible somewhere!