I got a Google CR-48 running Chrome OS, and you didn’t. But I’ll share. I have no idea how I was chosen to get one, but I did. And I’m in nerdvana.

You can sign up to be part of the Chrome OS Pilot Program until 11:59:59 PM PST on December 21, 2010. Do it. Then you can be as cool as me… which could be damning by faint praise. Anyway, let’s get to it.

The Hardware

First, nobody will ever be able to buy a CR-48–it’s a test unit– so an in-depth hardware review is stupid. Instead, here are the highlights and lowlights of this particular piece of gear.

Overview: nothing truly revolutionary. Biggest news is that caps lock is gone (to improve comments on 4Chan) and the function keys are replaced with: browser forward & back, refresh, full screen, “Overview” (we’ll get to that in a sec), brightness, volume, and power. I always thought the function keys were dumb anyway, so yay Google! Overclockers.com has some nice CR-48 unboxing stuff if you want the gory details and more pretty pics.

The Good:

• Rubberized finish on the case feels nice and looks like a stealth bomber. I bet this thing doesn’t show up on radar.
• Keyboard feels very much like modern Apple keyboards– even sounds the same. I like it.
• Webcam & mic are good enough.

The Bad:

• Rubberized finish on the case attracts more fingerprints than a mirror in a kindergarten class. I feel like a greasy, slobbering cretin.
• Anemic processor makes the experience feel super sluggish if there’s more than, say, 4 images– or, heaven forbid– Flash video embedded on a page. I’ll post some video later. This needs to be a non-issue by the time finished Chrome notebooks start shipping in 2011. Otherwise I predict epic fail.

Choppy Flash Video on CR-48 from seth gray on Vimeo.

The Ugly:

• The trackpad is painfully bad. Actually, it’s fucking terrible. It feels unpredictable. Maybe I’m being unfair because my reference point is my stellar MacBook Pro trackpad, which is glorious. Also, I don’t know if it’s the software or the hardware because I’m only a level 14 Geek. If it’s the software, Google’s got some ‘splainin to do. But this is a test device. And it was free. So I’m not complaining. Much.

The Software

Imagine all you had on your computer was a web browser– no Finder/Explorer. Got it? Yep, that’s Chrome OS. It’s different, and requires a different mindset. To add photos to this post, I pulled them from Instagr.am and Picasa. Now, you can store things on the machine, but it’s hard to navigate, and it actually just feels wrong– like the screenshots should automatically sync to Picasa, or Flickr, or something.

While Microsoft and Apple are busy making their operating systems more powerful, more flashy, more… well, just more, Google has taken the OS and made it effectively invisible. This makes you focus on the apps and what you want to do, rather than on how cool Aero Peek is in Win 7, or seeing how many widgets you can fit on your Snow Leopard dashboard. Chrome OS is to operating systems what Google.com is to websites: minimalist, extremely easy to use, and gets you where/what you want crazy fast.

Here’s the good, bad, and ugly

The Good:

• Speed: even on this anemic Intel Atom processor, this sucker wakes from sleep before I can put my hands on the keyboard. Connecting to the interwebz takes another 10 seconds or so, depending on if your using WiFi or the included 3G from Verizon.
• Always connected: WiFi or 3G. Love it. Wish every device (*cough* Apple *cough*) came with 3G. Or 4G. That’d be cool too. Word of caution on the 3G, though: In the nearly 24 hours I’ve had this CR-48, I’ve already burned through 30MB of the free monthly 100MB just with normal web browsing. Gonna keep it on WiFi whenever possible, obviously.
• New windows (versus just a new tab) open with an OS X Spaces-like slide to the right onto a new screen. Video below. This is a great little feature. Work stuff in one “space” and music, etc in another. And you can hit the “Next Tab”  button to move between your spaces/windows. Not sure why it’s the “Next Tab” button, since it goes to the next window/space/whatever. I’m going to call them spaces.

Chrome OS “New Window” from seth gray on Vimeo.

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The Bad:

• App management. I installed a bunch of apps from the Chrome Web Store (anyone using the Chrome browser can install apps. Don’t have to be running Chrome OS). Right now, there’s no way to organize them. The sit in a grid in the order you installed them. I’d like to see something like iOS app/folder management. Look it up.
• Clunky transfer of files from external devices. I had to use Vimeo to upload the to videos above because both Facebook & YouTube opened to the Downloads directory on this machine. There’s no way to navigate to a higher folder via the current dialog boxes. Vimeo opens right to the root directory, and Flip MinoHD shows up to the left. I tried getting a screencap but it didn’t work.
• WiFi security settings: currently can’t connect to any network that uses anything other than WEP, WPA, or RSN for security. No 802.1X authentication. Which means anyone who got a CR-48 and wants to take it into an enterprise environment that requires 802.1X authentication is out of luck. Unless they share the Ethernet connection via WiFi as an ad-hoc network from another machine. That would work.

The Ugly

• Honestly, there’s nothing about the software that bugs me as much as the trackpad problems. So, I guess I’ve got no “ugly” right now.

After a while, I didn’t really notice that I wasn’t in a traditional layered-window-based GUI. And that’s probably a good sign for Google. I’ll post more about my experiences in the coming weeks.

Google launched Sidewiki, an add-on to their ubiquitous toolbar, which lets you “contribute helpful information to any page.” You’d think they grew horns, a tail, and started carrying a pitchfork.

Does anyone else see the irony here? Blogs & other social media tools move control of the collective conversation away from established players (corporations, governments, etc.) and give it to the individual. Now we have as much reach and influence as as multi-billion dollar corporation… in theory anyway.

But look out! Here comes Google Sidewiki!

Jeff Jarvis warns: “I have no control over the content associated with my site, essentially on my site.” He worries that someone will post negative comments. And he’s right– that will happen. But that’s beside the point.

You may own the URL, but the user owns the browser.

How about an analogy? I’ve been picketed. Seriously. The company I used to work for ran out of money and couldn’t pay vendors. Some of those vendors decided to picket. They hooted, hollered, jumped up and down, waved their signs at passing cars. It sucked.But it was a conversation that was happening about our company, right outside our doors, on public property– and there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it. Think of that failed business as your website, and the sidewalk as the user’s web browser. The picketers are obviously comments in Sidewiki. Not a perfect analogy, I know. But you get the idea.

So, to those of you worried about losing control of the conversation on your websites, I suggest you heed your own advice: join the conversation and be authentic.

You never truly had control anyway.