Chrome OS is Interesting But Not Life Changing

I’m sure you’ve heard a whole lot of buzz about Google’s latest “revolutionary” product, Chrome OS, which is being touted as significant new way of thinking in terms of operating systems. I mean, what if we didn’t have to deal with updates and security issues or anything of the sort and instead, we just got what we do on the computer 95% of the time…just the internet. Heck, while we’re at it, let’s not having any storage issues either and just store everything on a stateless cloud somewhere on the interwebs.

Sure, this is fine and dandy if you’re a regular user who just wants to update their blog, their social networking sites and maybe play an addictive web-based game or two. I’m guessing that describes nearly everyone that is around my parents’ age and Chrome would be fantastic for them so they wouldn’t click on every link and get ridiculous viruses or spyware every twenty minutes. However, if you aren’t my parents’ or their peers, then you, like me, probably need something considerably more robust. I don’t know about you but I use my desktop exclusively for two things: Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop and World of Warcraft. I’m all for simplifying WoW but there’s no chance in hell you’ll convince me to that this new Google OS is capable of Lightroom.

And even then, would you really want to? In the age of shared information and copyright worries, photographers, videographers, etc have a lot to worry about when it comes to their rights and intellectual property. I’m not sure I want Google to have full access to everything I make since storing anything on their servers undoubtedly means that they “own” it. Heck, I won’t even store images larger than 800 pixels on Flickr and I refuse to store anything on Facebook due to their spotty terms of service when it comes to these things.

Until something proves otherwise, I have the overwhelming feeling that Chrome OS is going to be like one of those WebTVs or a more polished version of those heavily disabled web-browsing computers you might find at airports or shopping malls. It’ll be something I would install for my parents but definitely not something I would use myself.

in Tech and the Net