I've had the opportunity to play with Google's new Chrome OS and have been very impressed with it. It's in pre-beta and so I've had to run it in a virtual environment or off of a flash drive. You can read up on more of that here. The quick and dirty explanation of it is that Chrome OS is cloud based computing. There is a thin client (linux based) on your computer that connects you to the internet and have access to all of your apps. In this case, gmail, google docs, and a host of other things. No MS Windows bloat.
I really like what I'm seeing with it but the main reason I'm interested is that I'm looking for an alternative to Windows XP in an aging computer lab at the school I work at. The machines are five years old and showing their wear. I feel that in another year the computers will not be worth using since they take so long to accomplish anything. The kids and teachers are aggravated with it and I don't feel their lack of performance is acceptable.
With Chrome OS or any other form of cloud computing, the workload is put on the internet connection and whatever the machines may be connecting to. If things go as planned, we should be able to come up with some type of solution by summer for implementation in at least one of the labs for testing. I am counting on the probability that all apps will be web based very soon, which is not always the case in k12 education.
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