In a weird and not entirely pleasant twist of fate, LG has announced a Chrome OS… kiosk. Well, technically it’s an all-in-one PC, but given Chrome OS’s minimal feature set, it is essentially a kiosk. Called the Chromebase, there’s no word on pricing or availability yet, but given its chunky appearance and circa-2005 rounded bezels we’re probably looking at somewhere in the region of $300 to $400.
LG’s Chromebase, which will be shown off at CES 2014, is an all-in-one (AIO) with a 21.5-inch 1920×1080 IPS display, Intel Celeron CPU, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of solid-state storage. A fairly wimpy spec, but it sits firmly within Chrome OS’s minimum hardware requirements. The paltry supply of RAM may be an issue if you like to keep more than a few tabs open, but LG will probably offer a 4GB model for an extra $50 if you think you’ll need it. With a Celeron CPU, the Chromebase won’t exactly blitz through page loads, and you can expect a fair bit of slowdown if you try to do more than one non-basic tasks at the same time.
LG envisions the Chromebase as a secure kiosk-style computer for schools, hotels, call centers, and other settings that don’t require the feature set provided by a full Windows PC. Chrome OS is very secure, and cloud-based profiles — all of your bookmarks, add-ons, and apps are automatically synced when you log in – make it ideal for situations where dozens or hundreds of people might use the same computer. The Chromebase might also make sense as a family computer, though given the wimpy processor and lack of apps and games, your kids probably wouldn’t be too happy to receive a Chromebase for Christmas.
There are some other important questions about the Chromebase’s hardware spec, too. The LG press release doesn’t mention if the display is a touchscreen or not — a significant point, if the Chromebase is destined for kiosk use. Chrome OS has received a few touchscreen tweaks over the last year, which I assumed were for touchscreen Chromebooks — or perhaps, at long last, a Chrome OS tablet — but maybe they were in preparation for the Chromebase. The Chromebase will come with a mouse and keyboard, 2x USB 2.0 sockets, a single USB 3.0 socket, and an RJ45 LAN socket (probably Gigabit).
Curiously, the Chromebase has an HDMI input socket, meaning you can use it as a standalone screen — say, as a second display for your Windows PC, perhaps. It’s hard to come up with a valid usage scenario for such a setup, though. Maybe you use Chrome OS when you just want to bring up a website quickly, but boot your real PC when you want to do some gaming or Photoshop work? Given how quickly Windows 8 and OS X come out of standby, though, such a scenario seems tenuous at best. Still, having an HDMI input is better than not having an HDMI input. (See: HP Chromebook 11: Finally, a Chrome OS laptop with the right specs at the right price.)
The fact remains that Chrome OS occupies a weird mid-ground between fully-fledged mobile OS like Android, and a desktop OS like Windows. Chrome OS, which was initially conceived by Google as a mobile, browser-based, always-connected-to-the-cloud operating system, always seemed a bit ahead of its time. Browsers still don’t have native-level performance (and they churn through battery life), and mobile connectivity is still nowhere near good enough or cheap enough. As a result, Chrome OS has been forced to adapt, and the end result is essentially a secure but featureless OS that’s usually strapped onto cheap, weak hardware — because, let’s face it, no one would buy a Chromebook if it cost more than $400.
Via: ExtremeTech
Post a Comment