Google Cr-48 Chrome notebook teardown
by Bill Detwiler | December 14, 2010 5:14am PST | Image 1 of 116
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Cracking open the Google Cr-48 Chrome notebook
In December 2010, Google launched a pilot program to test and promote its Chrome OS. Through the program, the company sent specially designed Cr-48 Chrome notebooks to individuals who promised to "use it regularly and send us detailed feedback."
We got our hands on a Cr-48 notebook and couldn't wait to see the hardware inside. Follow along as we crack it open.
Photo by: Bill Detwiler / TechRepublic
Caption by: Bill Detwiler
We got our hands on a Cr-48 notebook and couldn't wait to see the hardware inside. Follow along as we crack it open.
Photo by: Bill Detwiler / TechRepublic
Caption by: Bill Detwiler
Just In
@willytc1066@... "I think you voided your warranty."
... and the downside?
Mental Note for Google R&D Teams ... "MUST stick to Android, Search and Ads ..."
... and the downside?
Mental Note for Google R&D Teams ... "MUST stick to Android, Search and Ads ..."
Couldn't ask for better analysis of this notebook; great if you need to repair it or others like it!
I think the press has missed the big picture here. The Cr-48 pilot program is not about hardware. It is supposed to be about the Chrome OS. (That is why they left the hardware as plain and uninteresting as possible, so as not to distract from the OS. But it seems like 90% of the stories I have seen seem to be focused on the hardware. It is like giving a kid a cool Christmas present and all he does is play with the box it came in...
@Bruizer
This kind of what I thought. Could you not take a 10 year old notebook, use Windows XP or a stripped linux build, have it only load Chrome Browser as the shell and have the same thing? (and get even better support for drivers, Flash etc.)
I hope to get my hands on one as an exorcise to see what you can do with only a browser... I, like most desktop/laptop users, am so ingrained in my old habits of having a local file system, etc, that this could take some getting used to.
This kind of what I thought. Could you not take a 10 year old notebook, use Windows XP or a stripped linux build, have it only load Chrome Browser as the shell and have the same thing? (and get even better support for drivers, Flash etc.)
I hope to get my hands on one as an exorcise to see what you can do with only a browser... I, like most desktop/laptop users, am so ingrained in my old habits of having a local file system, etc, that this could take some getting used to.
@TriadX1
But Chrome OS still lacks drivers for much common hardware.Sure, it runs on their hand-picked hardware, but try it on the average laptop that John Q Public owns and it won't recognize all of the standard hardware.
But Chrome OS still lacks drivers for much common hardware.Sure, it runs on their hand-picked hardware, but try it on the average laptop that John Q Public owns and it won't recognize all of the standard hardware.
@TriadX1 while i would generally agree with you on the hardware issue, as someone who received a cr-48 back in Feb & who's video display failed about 4 weeks ago, i can't help but focus on the hardware. as much as i'd like to get back to poking around in the OS, i'm spending an exhausting amount of time in forums & on the cr-48 trying to get the video to work w/o being plugged into an external monitor. it makes it impossible for me to demo to co-workers how awesome Chrome OS & the cr-48 is when i don't have a monitor to do so & the people i'm trying to show it to don't understand why the hardware doesn't work, so they'd never even get to the point of focusing on the OS.
unimpressive hardware, it should work as a VM. i wonder if they made any improvements to WINE, because WINE generally stinks.
I wonder if just contacting Google wouldn't have gotten the detailed specs that you've found and maybe Google would have sent this one to me to really use. Wasn't that the purpose of the machine - to use the OS?
I'm definitely gonna miss the absence of PageUp/PageDown keys. I've played around with a netbook without them, and it's horrible.
"You'll get up to 100MB of data transfer each month and can purchase more without a contract."
Perfect for playing an MMO!
No, wait . . . how big is WoW again? (hint: It's more than 10 GB)
"You'll get up to 100MB of data transfer each month and can purchase more without a contract."
Perfect for playing an MMO!
No, wait . . . how big is WoW again? (hint: It's more than 10 GB)
"The Google Cr-48 Chrome notebook uses the Intel NM10 Express chipset, that consists of an Atom N455 CPU and a southbridge chip (shown here)."
Eh, so much for those people declaring ARM to be the future and Intel to be dead, lol.
Eh, so much for those people declaring ARM to be the future and Intel to be dead, lol.
Nice to see all the images taken with enough depth of field so that everything is in focus.
I don't care about the labor. I wanna see the delivery - the baby. How about a review of how it actually works? While engineers care about design, users care about experience.
Perhaps I didn't pay attention, can somebody tell me what video card does this netbook have?
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