I haven’t been lucky enough to get my hands on a Google Cr-48 Chrome laptop just yet, but I’m definitely in the pool of willing testers. The laptop may be a bit ahead of its time, judging from most people’s first impressions of essentially using a wireless terminal to access data, resources, and applications that all reside “in the cloud,” or essentially, on the Web.

Bluntly, the Cr-48 features a beautiful matte black finish that everyone who gets their hands on it seems to love, but it doesn’t feature wired Ethernet, there’s no optical drive, there’s virtually no data store that gives you a method to really work or be productive when you’re offline. There’s a pretty fast SSD inside, but it’s not large and it’s designed to host the Chrome OS and any downloadable files. Essentially, the thing is fast, light, sleek, but absolutely requires an Internet connection to really work.

Granted, if you’re like me and you’re always somewhere there’s wireless or some kind of Internet connection, that’s not really an issue for you – you very well may be able to be as productive with the Cr-48 as anyone with an fully-featured laptop, but we’ll have to see as Google’s test program widens and manufacturers willing to produce Chrome OS laptops come to the fore.

[ PC Mag :: Google Chrome Cr-48, Paragon of Minimalist Design ]