Google CR-48 Laptop

After waiting about a month and a half to receive a Google CR-48, I received a pleasant email from Package Express by the Sumas border saying they had a package waiting for me. Since I ordered nothing else recently, I thought that it must be the CR-48 from Google. So the next day after work, I went down and picked it up, and tried to bring it back into Canada. Since I paid nothing for it, and Google is not selling it, the border guards had a bit of an issue with it being free, so after heading inside and talking with them, they eventually returned my passport and let me continue.

I got home, opened it up, put in the battery and turned it on, and within 15 seconds it was prompting me to enter my Google account credentials. So I did that, let it take a picture of me, and voila, I was in and staring at a Chrome browser.

The CR-48 with the box that it came in

The CR-48 with the sticker that was included

Here is a quick review from me,
Hardware
The plastic case feels great, it has a nice soft rubbery feel to it, and the keyboard is also great. The screen is alright, and has a decent resolution of 1280x800 (vertically more than my other laptop with at 15.6" screen).
The hardware specs on it are alright (for the price especially :)), with an Intel Atom @ 1.66GHz, 2GB RAM, 16GB SSD, 802.11N 2.4+5GHz wireless adapter, universal Gobi 2000 wireless card, bluetooth, SD card reader, and a single USB port. You can surf the web on it, and do other basic tasks, but it does struggle with things like youtube or any other video. The battery life is awesome though, you should be able to get 8 hours out of it!

Software
ChromeOS is just like what its name implies, Chrome as the OS pretty much. The first time you log in, that is pretty much all you see and will ever see. The whole idea behind this, is to have everything in the cloud, from documents to pictures, so everything you do is on the internet. Which makes the laptop pretty much useless without the internet. Hence Google + Verizon gives you 100MB per month to use wirelessly (Useless for me though, as I am in Canada). If you want to print, Google has their Google Cloud Printing , so if you have another computer connected to your printer with Chrome 9 or later, you can set it up so that from your CR-48 or even Android phone, you can print to that printer from anywhere. I set this laptop to use the development builds rather than the beta builds so that I am always running the most up-to-date version of ChromeOS.

In conclusion, the CR-48 is a decent basic machine. I usually use it on the couch or when I don't feel like using my main computer and just want to surf the web. My brother and sister also use it often to go on things like Youtube or Facebook.
I could see myself using it in University because it is pretty light and has great battery life, and with Google Docs I can still do notes and things.
Overall it makes a good second machine for browsing the web and doing basic tasks, but it could not replace my main Windows 7 machine because I need things like Skype, programming tools, video games, DVD's, and other tools. But who knows where we will be in 5-10 years, so I hope Google keeps up the great work.