Hands-on: Chrome 10 Pushes the Browser Speed Barrier - Computerworld

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An article at ComputerWorld hightlight the speed improvements in Google Chrome 10. We lucky CR-48 owners who are using the development channel have seen our Chrome version rocket to 11.0.

Read the article here:

Hands-on: Chrome 10 pushes the browser speed barrier - Computerworld

Related articles

• Google Chrome 10 Released, A Robust Progress in Speed | TechOncept (techoncept.com)
• Google Chrome 10 focuses on speed and security (infoworld.com)
• Speedier, Easier Google Chrome Browser Now Out Of Beta (via TechCrunch) (roscoesdreams.wordpress.com)
• Google Chrome 10 Released; Gets Password Sync and is Really Fast (techie-buzz.com)

Another Update in the Development Channel for CR-48s

Image via CrunchBaseLast night (3/7) brought a new update to the Development Channel, and now we have the following version information:

Chrome OS 0.11.227.0 (Official Build) dev-channel x86-mario

Google Chrome 11.0.690.0

However, this release comes with more problems than it's worth, and from what I hear this morning the update has been pulled.

The problems were many:  Crashing on every restart, blank, white pages, inability to go to bookmarked pages and receive any data, plus many more.  A new functionality was added to pre-render web pages and according to on of the moderators on the Google Groups group for the pilot program, you need to disable this in order for pages to load correctly.  You do this by going to the about:flags page and selecting Disable from the drop-down in the Pre-rendering group.  Problem is, a lot of people can't even get to the about:flags page to change this setting.  It takes several reboots, closing all tabs, a couple of crashes and, well, you get the idea.

On a good note, with the upgrade to Chrome 11.0.690.0, there is a very noticeable speed improvement.  Pages draw much  more quickly, and there is no lag in any of the websites that I normally use.  Reminds me more of the commercial that Google did early on for Chrome that show it being faster than a speeding projectile and other things.  Also the track-pad is much better behaved.  Scrolling in all directions is smooth and controllable.  Another new feature is the window cycle button in the top of the window by the battery monitor.  If you have several windows and panels open, pressing this button will cycle through them all.

So, if the rumor about the update being pulled is correct, then hopefully the next release will fix the problems for those of us who got this upgrade.  When  that happens, this will be a great little machine.   Snappy, responsive and with some really great features.

Application Review - Chromey Calculator

While looking for a calculator application to use on the CR48, I found a number of the usual types of calculators, and most were very usable.  But then I came across the Chromey Calculator.  For pure nerd-appeal, this has got to be one of the best.  As you can see from this screenshot

the calculator lets you do a number of interesting things.  Entering "distance to the moon in miles" will return the value of that which you can then assign to a variable (denoted by the @ symbol) for use in further calculations. Basic and advanced math functions are supported as well as some statistical functions and trigonometric functions.  You can retrieve any numerical value that you can think of and use it in your calculations.  Want to find the speed of a body falling off of the Empire State Building?  Get the height of the building and the constant for acceleration due to gravity, plug it into the formula and you've got your answer.  Not sure what the formula is?  You only need to enter a phrase to lookup the formula you need.
Lots of fun to just poke around and find some interesting data, like the distance to Betelgeuse in Light years (641.8) or the diameter of the Milky Way (100,000ly) and great for balancing the checkbook
Check it out in the Google App Store.