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back to article Google's Schmidt pitches Chrome OS netbooks

Browser-obsessed netbooks running Google's Chrome operating system will be the freshest thing to hit computing in two decades, Eric Schmidt claims. Speaking at the Atmosphere Cloud Computing Forum the Google CEO heralded the coming of "completely disposable" mobile devices running Chrome OS that boot up in two seconds and …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In other words...

    "We are not in that business," Schmidt said. "We are in the ads and enterprise software business - I don't think we'll go that far.

    In other words, yes, they will go into that business. How far off reality do you have to be to consider $300-400 "disposable", or will they only sell this to millionaires?

    And come to think of it, where's the evil Eric Schmidt icon?

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  2. A B 3

    Re: Schimdt Icon

    He's the troll doll.

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  3. Cheese

    Disposable

    Well I guess so...for a billionaire.

    If you are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, his wording could be viewed as a referrence to the cloud nature of storage (rather than the financial cost). If you lose the thing, no data is lost: just buy a new device from the local supermarket and plug back into your cloud of apps and data.

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  4. Neal 5

    @buck futter

    considering $300-$400 to be disposable is chicken feed. The average Iraqi or Afghani is considerind disposable for the price of a $1 piece of lead and American expenditure on such like and other is in excess of $500 Bn for 2010. I can't be bothered to work that out in terms of dead Afghani's, but it seems more than enough for genocide, so that's either a whole lot of wasted lead, or a genuine reflection on what Americans term to be disposable.

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    1. Trevor Pott o_O Gold badge
      Reply Icon

      Wasted lead.

      After all, isn't the American approach to pretty much anything "throw enough bullets at it and you're bound to hit it eventually?"

      Like "throw enough bullets at this individual, we'll get him eventually." Or "allow enough megacorporate monopolies, and one of them is bound to eventually be benevolent." "Allow enough corruption and eventually a just law will be written." "Bully enough other countries via closed and secretive processes to adopt your unjust laws and eventually you'll regain industrial and economic global supremacy."

      The hell of it is that this approach actually works. Some bright spark somewhere eventually stumbled upon the excellent idea of “repeat a lie enough times on Fox News, and eventually you can convince the American public of /anything/.” I may dislike the American approach to just about everything, but the reality is that “spam [X] over and over again until [you achieve success]” seems to work for them.

      It just means that there is no way you could ever make comparisons like “one bullet expended, one individual killed.” Those folks just don’t work like that.

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  5. dave 93
    Thumb Down

    Dream on...

    "There has not been a new successful platform in this [mobile] space in 20 years," Schmidt said.

    Er, iPhone, Android, iPad anyone?

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  6. Ammaross Danan
    Megaphone

    Also in other words

    "We are not in that business," Schmidt said. "We are in the ads and enterprise software business - I don't think we'll go that far."

    Isn't this the same line they gave about Android OS and smartphones? Of course, the turnaround for a googlephone was quite rapid actually. I wonder how long of a turnaround a googlebook would take?

    Of course, one can argue that HTC made the googlephone, and thus Google is indeed "not in that business," but what's to stop them doing the same self-branding?

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  7. Tom_

    Lol at Neal 5

    You can't be bothered to work out what 500 billion divided by 1 comes to? :)

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  8. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    If I want a nothing-but-a-browser operating system I WILL buy an iPad.

    I don't think it IS an operating system if it only runs one program. Then it's just "a program".

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  9. Mage Silver badge
    Alien

    Daft

    Even an iPad is more sense.

    If these sell well, it proves that Humans are on average pretty stupid.

    Offline use?

    Flexibility?

    Security?

    Privacy?

    An identical spec HW running Linux and Firefox will do everything these do. Can be locked down to have only a Browser. Has no SW tax.

    With Google you are paying. Via every product you buy advertised via Google.

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  10. Paul Crawford Silver badge

    Biggest problem...

    ...is the need for a fast/reliable connection at all times. I was on a train journey recently and it had a woefully slow WiFi due to the number using it, rendering most web apps useless. And I am too cheap to pay for a 3G dongle (which would still be flaky in a lot of areas/tunnel/etc).

    Any such thin client must 'simply work' automatically with a flaky link, or it will fail. I do look forward though to the market reactions when it finally makes it :)

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  11. Tom Chiverton 1

    Umm

    "HTML5 for security" ? What is he on ?

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  12. The_Police!
    Coat

    Fresh?

    There is an app for that!

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