First Look: Chrome OS Zero

Posted on 12. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in Reviews

Well, I’ve had the chance to load up the old USB drive with Zero and take it for a spin. In fact, I’m writing this post with Zero right now. I have to say that there is a lot more polish to this version compared to previous builds. In the past I noticed that there seemed to be slight glitches here and there within the interface, especially in the navigational bar at the top. However, these types of issues are to be expected since this was a part of a very early version of the operating system – although they now appear to be gone.

chromeoszero2 First Look: Chrome OS Zero

The load time for Zero is very fast – seven seconds to login at my count. Once logged in with the facepunch/facepunch combo, I quickly connected to my wireless internet. I was able to surf around with ease, and felt like I could really get used to this on a day-to-day basis. One problem is taking screenshots and the handling of image files, however.

In the top right, it appears that the options menu to the far right where you can see your machine’s battery status and wireless connection has been removed, and that’s probably because you can access the OS’s preferences from the wrench icon – this was probably changed to reflect how the Chrome browser is set up.

Extensions are a big deal to Chromium, and anyone who uses the Chrome browser would agree with this fact. That’s why the have been added to this version of Chrome OS. Of course, being the intrepid blogger I attempted to take screenshots of Zero with the Aviary extension tool which allows you to take screens in the Chrome browser. Unfortunately I received a rather polite error stating that Flash was just not going to cooperate with me.

I’m not sure what the issue is with Flash yet, but I’ve pos ed my question at the Chromium Group to see if I get an answer. I did a quick search over there and it looks like there is an issue with it. Since Fl ash has been reported as a potential security risk perhaps early builds are going to go without it until regular users start adopting the OS.

I’m not sure how how automatic updates work in Zero, but according to Hexxeh’s site this is a new feature in this build. I think it’s a great idea since that will be how all updates are delivered in the future for Chromium.