Another article which examines the cost of the Chromebook in relation to the Microsoft money suck. It describes how it is very attractive to use Chromebooks that are always updated with the latest version of the operating system, and that have a cost-free upgrade plan included.
Check it out:
Google Chromebooks: Aimed directly at Microsoft's PC upgrade cycle for $28 a month | ZDNet
Showing posts with label Grooveshark. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grooveshark. Show all posts
Monday, May 16, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
New Update in Developer Channel Cures Some Ills
Image via WikipediaLast night (2/10), a new developer channel update was pushed to my CR-48. That would be the second update this week (gotta love the development channel) and it has fixed my major complaints with the last update that I wrote about on Monday (2/7). But don't get me wrong, it wasn't real evident at first. Here's why:The update downloaded and installed, at which point I restarted the CR-48. First thing I did is check out Google Docs and a couple of other sites that were causing me problems since the last upgrade. Everything seemed to be working flawlessly again. So, I started Grooveshark, and lo and behold, still no music. Very disappointing as this is one of the reasons I love the CR-48. Having a machine that plays my music while I work is very important. So, I thought I'd also checkout the webcam functionality which has been borked since the last update, and it also was still non-functioning. Okay, I thought. Wait for the next upgrade.
This morning I'm checking out a couple of Chrome OS forums, and I see that someone has started a thread about the update from last night. And there in that posting is the answer I was looking for! In the about:plugins page (which I only visited briefly when I first got the CR-48) you can look at the details of the plugins by clicking the Details link. This shows that there are two versions of the Shockwave Flash plugin installed: 10.1 and 10.2. The poster in the forum said that to enable media and web cam and all sorts of other things that were broken in the last update that you only needed to enable the 10.2 plugin and disable the 10.1 plugin. I did this and found that everything I was missing was now fixed.
Flash sites seem faster, music plays from sites like Grooveshark, Hulu works again, and the web cam and microphone are working again from Flash sites.
Gotta love the development channel!
Monday, February 7, 2011
New Development Channel Update Brings Some Misery
I mentioned in a previous post that there was a new update available on the developer channel. Problem is, there's problems there.
This version of the OS brings problems with media content. MP3's no longer play. Grooveshark music displays a "Cannot play" message for all music. Some video content will not play. (I found I can still view hulu content.)
All of the flags in the about:flags page have been reset to the defaults, so you have to go in and change things back to whatever you had them set to previously. So, for instance, if you had enabled advanced file system support so that you can read your usb and sd drives, you will need to reenable it.
You can now drag and drop the app icons around in the new window views to customize that view. And the sync settings now come up in their own dialog from the settings window.
I've also noticed that I'm getting crashes more frequently. The good news is that whereas these crashes used to take down all of my tabs, it is now confined to the tab that causes the exception.
So, while there are a couple of pluses in this last update, the loss of the ability to play different media files is a big buzz-kill. Hopefully, Google follows this release up pretty quickly with something that works a little better!
This version of the OS brings problems with media content. MP3's no longer play. Grooveshark music displays a "Cannot play" message for all music. Some video content will not play. (I found I can still view hulu content.)
All of the flags in the about:flags page have been reset to the defaults, so you have to go in and change things back to whatever you had them set to previously. So, for instance, if you had enabled advanced file system support so that you can read your usb and sd drives, you will need to reenable it.
You can now drag and drop the app icons around in the new window views to customize that view. And the sync settings now come up in their own dialog from the settings window.
I've also noticed that I'm getting crashes more frequently. The good news is that whereas these crashes used to take down all of my tabs, it is now confined to the tab that causes the exception.
So, while there are a couple of pluses in this last update, the loss of the ability to play different media files is a big buzz-kill. Hopefully, Google follows this release up pretty quickly with something that works a little better!
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Installed App Review - Grooveshark
Sorry I've been absent for a while. These snowstorms that keep rolling through are keeping me busy.
So today I want to start talking about some of the apps that I've installed. While my reviews won't be great in-depth analyses, you will be able to determine if an app is something in which you might be interested.
This is a screenshot of Grooveshark running on my CR-48. It's currently playing a radio station of Classic Rock music. The sound on the CR-48 is pretty good, and through earplugs it sounds really good. Grooveshark allows you to search for music, see what others are listening to, create playlists and mark songs as favorites. To enable all of these features requires you to create an account, but for a free music service you can't go wrong. Grooveshark has all of the usual music player controls plus more. And with the easy carry size of the the CR-48, there's no reason that this can't be your all-in-one device.
Music, phone calls over Google Voice, Google Talk for video chats, etc., etc. What a great machine!!!
So today I want to start talking about some of the apps that I've installed. While my reviews won't be great in-depth analyses, you will be able to determine if an app is something in which you might be interested.
This is a screenshot of Grooveshark running on my CR-48. It's currently playing a radio station of Classic Rock music. The sound on the CR-48 is pretty good, and through earplugs it sounds really good. Grooveshark allows you to search for music, see what others are listening to, create playlists and mark songs as favorites. To enable all of these features requires you to create an account, but for a free music service you can't go wrong. Grooveshark has all of the usual music player controls plus more. And with the easy carry size of the the CR-48, there's no reason that this can't be your all-in-one device.
Music, phone calls over Google Voice, Google Talk for video chats, etc., etc. What a great machine!!!
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