I absolutely love the fact that a laptop fully based around the web is being denied a caps lock key. Good riddance. I think 99% of its usage (constants aside) is for trolling/yelling.

I like to use it as my Control key, though. I'd be concerned that they would replace it with something else and I'd have to learn to twist my pinky unnaturally again.

This is exactly what I was about to say. It looks like they've used the caps lock position for the Fn key on the cr-48, so it looks like this may not be possible on this unit.

Then again, I guess it's not that big a deal since the ctrl key doesn't really get used on the web.

It looks like a 'search' key actually. Look closely at the fourth screenshot. Not sure if I'm right, though.

Photos of this laptop leaked several days ago, with greater detail on the keyboard. It is indeed a search key. The shift key also has a light on it, suggesting that it can be double-tapped to activate caps lock.

I use the ctrl key a lot on ssh sessions. If the web is now reduced to youtube and valleywag, I'd gladly abandon it.

You are thinking of the Internet. The Web is an abbreviation of the "World Wide Web" (of hyperlinks), rather than the medium which conveys its data.

touché. good point.

ok, so i must say web represent a very very very low priority on my internet usage. having only 'the web' would be like cable TV with only the weather channel.

No. Thanks.

You can map it to Ctrl.

In Chrome OS? Is there a web app for that?

It's built in.

http://code.google.com/p/chromium-os/issues/detail?id=5152

Indeed. I can't remember the last time I hit the caps lock key on purpose.

But how will we ever code in FORTRAN on the thing?

Wait 13 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran#FORTRAN_77

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran#Fortran_90

They shouldn't put a "country" field on their form if its only open to the USA. Highly disappointing.

Seriously, I got all excited too, however http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/update-on-chrome-web-...

"We're starting with the U.S. and will expand to other countries once we get the necessary certifications. To participate in the pilot program, visit the Chrome notebook website."

Any Googlers here (Matt_Cutts?) in a position to comment on how long we'll be waiting to hear about this? Because being accepted as a tester would absolutely make my December.

I'm not Matt, but I work on Chrome OS, so that probably counts for something.

However: I don't know the answer to this question. Sorry. We do want to get pilots their devices as soon as possible though.

I get this tingle in my mind when I think about Chrome OS and it's netbook. Happened when I first saw the Nexus too.

A chance to present the world with a unified device that access the internet, doesn't cost much, and is very portable.

Thank you.

Sorry--it's far enough away from me that I have no idea. I'm sure the Chrome OS team wants to get devices to testers as soon as is practical though.

Matt_Cutts is the web spam expert there; I doubt he's in any position to comment on Chrome OS.

Matt_Cutts is technically a web spam expert, but he is also a generally high profile public facing Googler who knows such things. Maybe he doesn't follow android, or maybe it would be inappropriate to answer this; but it doesn't seem crazy that he'd know.

Why put a country drop down when it's only available in the US? From Canada here... bah humbug.

Because they're allowing other countries soon (pending some required certification), so I can forgive them having the country selection prematurely.

Anyone know the reasoning behind the Cr-48 name? Maybe because that isotope of chromium is one of the longer lived non-stable isotopes of chromium?

Bang on; Cr-48 was chosen precisely because it's an unstable isotope of chromium.

For a second I thought it was a play on create (Cr348 = Cr-48), but your explanation sounds better.

For a second I thought it was a play on the name of a protocol droid...

What the speaker said went along the lines of "after awhile the engineers settled on 48." It seemed like there wasn't a clear reason behind it, although my lack of chem knowledge could be why.

Chromium's atomic number if 24, 48 is twice that. That's all I got :)

They alluded to something like that in the webcast.

More likely the software engineers were only moderately versed in chemistry (in a didn't do it since high school/college way) and just doubled the atomic number to get the atomic weight, not realizing that for heavier elements more neutrons are required for stability.

Very disappointed it's US only (but used to it lately, being Australian).

I'm a heavy Google services user for work & personal (as i'm sure most people here are), and I start commuting 2hrs each way to work in a month, so something like this would've been perfect for the commute. I'd happily spend that time testing the laptop and taking part in feedback. Ah well.

I'm a developer and am always looking for the next big platform to develop for. This sounds absolutely perfect. I definitely agree though that if there is no text editor local to the machine I wonder how well it could be used for development, but overall I think it would be interesting to test the device.

Cute quiz to measure how addicted you are to the internet?

http://www.google.com/chromeos/pilot-program-quiz.html

I'm a little irritated by the end of this quiz telling me I'm "addicted to my desktop" and "why not switch to online alternatives?"

Hey Google, why don't you make it so I can indent lines with tab in Gmail, or give me some confidence that my e-mails will be properly formatted (i.e. as required on some mailing lists)? Why don't you make it so I can watch Netflix in one Chrome window without stuttering when I do some other browsing simultaneously in a separate window, or make it so I can use global hot keys to control music playback from random music players in a browser window? Why don't you make Google Docs work offline? (Announcement of "early 2011" posted today, at least.) Why don't you make it so I have confidence that I'll be able to get online and get at my data wherever I am, whenever I need it, without paying a fortune?

That's why I'm not switching to more online alternatives: the desktop applications I still use provide a better user experience and are more reliable. Google, your question reads like I'm the one with the problem.

    Hey Google, why don't you make it so I can indent lines with tab in Gmail

Isn't that your OS/Browsers fault?

    Why don't you make Google Docs work offline? (Announcement of "early 2011" posted today, at least.)

I thought they did this with LocalStorage/Google Gears?

> Isn't that your OS/Browsers fault?

I'm using Google Chrome, but that aside, they asked why I don't switch to more online applications. This is one reason.

> I thought they did this with LocalStorage/Google Gears?

They were doing it with Gears, but they ceased support for Gears--and thus offline Google Docs--as of like May this year, I believe.

> Gears Yeah, this is because Gears was basically HTML5/localstorage

From the web page:

>Chrome OS is for people who live on the web. It runs web-based applications, not legacy PC software.

Google apparently thinks that being in control of your own computer is a "legacy" concern.

I guess directly empowering users is out of date, while trusting Google unconditionally with all your personal data is the new, hip, digital totalitarian future.

Google does let you export data in many instances, to be fair.

Interesting how the questions are framed, which sites are mentioned in the drill down sections, and in what order. (They mentioned weather underground, which I thought was interesting, since that's a very old school web 1.0 kind of site)

Also interesting how it graded me below average, even when I massively exaggerated how much I use web apps. It's almost as if Google has a vested interest in promoting the use of web apps, or something.

I think weather underground deserves a mention because it provides a lot more data than most weather sites. It may not be very fancy and dynamic, but most of the sites that are use their flashiness to distract from their deeper shortcomings.

Sure it does. That's what the premise behind Chrome OS is. Web apps are supposedly as good as their desktop counterparts. It's getting there, but I think not just yet.

That was a pretty interesting survey.

Personally, there are only a couple of things that I don't do regularly on the internet: listen to music and text editing. (The only applications I add to Windows 7 on my netbook is Notepad2, Foobar2000, and Chrome.)

It says that I spend less time on the web than most people, which is weird, because I live surrounded by web developers and I am online WAY more often than they are...

I can see how I can use this for document/email type work. My version control system has a web interface so I can review code.

But developers are going to want text editors/a terminal/vcs. I do everything else on my machine.

I've been thinking of some sort of server in the cloud for this kind of functionality from tablets....

In no way am I suggesting that it's an equivalent editor, but you may want to take a look at Mozilla Skywriter (formerly Bespin).

https://mozillalabs.com/skywriter/

If I get the chance to be a Chrome OS tester, I'll be giving this a thorough try.

Did anyone else not receive a confirmation page of any sort? I submitted the application and was routed directly back.

They botched error handling I think. That happened to me once - turns out my text field was too long. Cut yours down to 140 characters and re-submit it, does that give you the confirmation page?

Thanks for the suggestion! It worked the second time and did provide a confirmation page.

This is different from the bare-bones quiz linked from Chrome's "New Tab" page. In any case, I filled this new one out too since it lets me actually tell them I'm a developer.

Yes, I'm desperate ;)

As per usual, all the world's American. This Brit says boo and hiss.

There's probably going to be an international trial soon. However, I can assume the OS will be released in free beta for you to test on your own hardware.

Since Google's requesting fairly intensive feedback, I can assume it's easier for their team to track usage in a domestic market.

I guess this is better than hearing about Wikileaks 24/7.

"So if you live in the United States" ... yet the address country box had Egypt.

désolé

getting increasingly annoying that most things like these require that participants are US residents. Don't you guys care what us Europeans have to say? I'd would have liked to apply too.

They have a country field but no way to change the state. Fail.

Too bad they don't ship to Canada :(