Announced on December 7th, 2010, the Google built CR48 was the first Chromebook released. Five years on it’s starting to show its age, but it’s still pretty current and runs pretty nicely; but all good things come to an end and as of today, the CR48 is no longer eligible to receive updates.
Google extended the support for Chromebooks in May last year, with the Google support page for Chromebooks now stating that support is for ‘5 years for Chrome devices from launch of the hardware’. That date has now come and the CR48 is the first Chromebook to reach the milestone. As a reference platform, the CR48 saw only limited distribution, and most of that in the US, so the impact of this ending of support will be minimal.
According to the list, the first mainstream Chrome OS device, the Samsung built ‘Chromebook Series 5’ will be the next to reach this unenviable milestone in June next year, with the Acer AC700 following soon after in August.
The CR48 was a hell of Chromebook, with a beautiful matte rubberised finish, similar to that which we next saw on Google’s LG-built Nexus 5. The lack of any branding on the device makes it still one of the best looking laptops I’ve ever owned and even after 5 years, it still works. Of course the CR48 will continue to work, it just won’t receive feature or security updates from now on – unless Google changes their mind.
If you’re interested, you can actually still pick up a good deal on the CR48 via eBay, but with no more updates inbound it may be worthwhile looking at newer models.
Chromebooks arrived in Australia back in March 2013, but of late they’ve been increasingly hard to find. JB Hifi no longer carries them in-store or on their website, and nor seemingly does Harvey Norman – though Google still lists only these two suppliers as the ‘official’ partners on their Australian Chrome devices page.
But, Chromebooks, and Chrome OS devices aren’t quite dead in Australia, Dick Smith does still at least list one Chromebook on their website and Dell ships one model to Australia as well. Asus will begin shipping their ChromeBit dongle to Australia this month, and Amazon in the US will ship you a Chromebook, ChromeBox, ChromeBase in no time at all.
If you haven’t yet used a Chrome OS device, it’s well worth your time to jump in and try one out. The ChromeBit will be a good place to start when it launches, but for true convenience and speed, the Chromebook still is a great machine and even though the progenitor of all these wonderful devices has reached the end of its life, there promises to be a lot more to come.
I’m on the Samsung Series 5 chromebook right now. In several ways, it’s great, but performance is pretty bad for the most part. With some patience, it’s alright, but it definitely did not meet Google’s advertisements for speed. And it’s gotten slower, not faster. In April 2012, they changed the interface to something desktop-like, similar to Windows, and the performance dove, maybe to half, and if it’s increased since then, it’s not clear. My chromebook came with a slip of paper that said it was designed to get faster with updates. I don’t trust Google or believe in Google the… Read more »
The great thing about Chromebooks is how fit they are for purpose – and that purpose is essentially web browsing and watching streamed video. In other words, 99% of what the majority of people probably use their PCs for these days.
Sure, you can buy a similarly priced low-spec Windows PC, but the Chromebook will kill it in boot-up time and overall snappiness given how light-weight ChromeOS is.
is there a torrent client for chrome OS?
I believe there are a few torrent clients as browser extensions, but the generally speaking the low storage capacity of these machines makes them less than ideal for doing a lot of torrenting. As I said above, better for streaming i.e. Netflix, Youtube etc.
JS Torrent works well. But if you’re intending to do this make sure you have some better storage, Chromebooks don’t come with a lot.
JS Torrent does cost $2.99 – but it works really well.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jstorrent/anhdpjpojoipgpmfanmedjghaligalgb
If you get it, then definitely get JS Torrent Helper (This one is free):
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jstorrent-helper-extensio/bnceafpojmnimbnhamaeedgomdcgnbjk
I can’t understand that people think 99% of PC usage is web browsing and video streaming. Sure that might be your use case, doesn’t mean it applies to the remaining 99% of pc usage.
I genuinely think for most non-techy people ie people who don’t frequent blogs like this it is. Talking home use of course. It’s not the case for me, I’m a geek, but it certainly is for all my immediate and extended family for example.
Note that I only said for the majority of people, ie I still think it’s fair to say that 99% of what more than half the population use computers for is web and watching video.