Dell releases the first customized Chrome system
A Dell staffer has put together a special edition of Google’s Chrome operating system which is tailor-made for one of the company’s netbook. While hardly ready for mainstream release, the customization is a good sign for the system getting adopted by big-name firms.
The Dell release follows a generic USB edition of Chrome which was created by an enthusiast from the source code released by Google. To get it you’ll need to download a 300MB compressed file via a torrent system, uncompress this to a 3GB image file, then write this to a USB stick.
If you then boot your computer from the USB (which will either be automatic or need manual intervention during the boot process depending on your set-up), you’ll be able to try out the system. It’s important to stress that there’s no guarantee of reliability and it really is only worth trying if you are curious about how Chrome will run.
If and when you get the system running, you’ll find it’s little more than a tarted-up edition of the Chrome browser: the application icons simply link to relevant online applications, and data is stored via your Google account (which you’ll need to try the system). It’s likely the final edition will include the option to store data on your machine, probably on a solid state disk, but this isn’t in place yet.
You should also remember that running Chrome OS on a desktop or laptop is not its primary purpose. It’s really designed to be used on devices such as netbooks where Internet access is the key aim, and a super-fast boot process becomes an important issue.
The other drawback to this test edition is that driver support is, perhaps inevitability, quite patchy. Most people who’ve used it have found printing and wired Internet access works fine, but wireless Internet device support is hit and miss.
That’s where the Dell edition comes in. The firm’s “technology strategist” Doug Anson has put together a version of the system specially designed for the company’s Mini 10v netbook, complete with support for the machine’s built-in Wi-Fi.
Don’t look for this to be at the heart of Dell TV ads any time soon: Anson notes it can take as long as 10 minutes for the Wi-Fi to hook-up (somewhat defeating the object) and describes the system as “highly experimental and completely unstable.”
But it is an encouraging sign for Google that a high-profile firm is already, and publicly, looking at ways to customize the system for a specific machine. That’s the type of activity which increases the chances that mainstream users will be able to run Chrome machines straight out of the box.
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