18.I believe it will be free of charge. I believe immediate support might cost, though. I believe the same model used for Chrome will be used for the operating system - mostly Google will maintain the code and trusted external contributors will join them, working by guidelines dictated by both Google and the community (the final word will be of Google, of course, but with a great ear to listen to the community). I believe the support will grow as the time progresses and as a goal, will reach maximum compatibility with most of the software (Linux ones, obviously, Windows and Mac ones... less expected but might be) and hardware. Posted by: PhistucK | July 8, 2009 9:49 AM 19.Just my two cents on question #7: I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple drop their OS in favor of the Google OS. It saves them money, and they can make the argument that their computers are the ones that run the best using the platform. Posted by: Brandon Mendelson | July 8, 2009 10:01 AM 20.@Valetin CUPS is bundled with the Linux distros I commonly work with. Posted by: Bradley Robb | July 8, 2009 10:03 AM 21.re. point 2 "none of us run Photoshop on our netbooks" Have you seen for cool cloud based vector and photo editing? The point being it is about form factor rather than ability to do it... re. Linux Netbook's having a four times greater return rate... The ASUS netbook I bought had the Centos 'for dummies' interface enabled which was massively frustrating and didn't meet my basic needs. My experience with it only improved when I put a fairly standard ubuntu distribution on it... If other netbook manufacturers made similar choices I'm not too surprised that it would be a big shock for Joe Consumer. Andrew Posted by: Andrew Darnell | July 8, 2009 10:04 AM 22.@Sarah consumers will be afraid of change if they are constantly told there will be a change. "Marketing is about what not to talk about." Take a note of T-Mobile's G1 and myTouch3G list of features and specs on their consumer-facing site. It says all about Google, fantastic apps, personalization, how cool it is and such and not a word about Linux. Not in the small fonts even. @Bradley Robb that was my exact point. Posted by: Valentin | July 8, 2009 11:13 AM 23.All of you are assming that it's Linux and thus will run Linux apps - but you missed the new window manager part of the announcement - it sounds like this isn't using X11, and if not, GIMP etc won't run. The OS is using the Linux *kernel* - they've said nothing about CUPS, device driver support, etc. Kernel != OS. Put simply, if this is full-fledged Linux with very tight Chrome browser integration it's nothing more than a new distro of Linux. Snooze. If it's the kernel with X11 replaced and a web-only model then issues of driver support, app support and usefulness are all valid points. It's one thing to have a netbook that's web only since they tend to be secondary machines. But a web-only primary machine? Not sure that we're ready for that. Posted by: rick | July 8, 2009 11:20 AM 24.Its groundbreaking idea from Google web OS and they are planning to wipe out Windows in a most strategic manner. Google clearly pointing to Microsoft when they say "The operating systems that browsers run were designed in an era where there was no web". Its yet to be known how they are going to profit from Chrome OS? Another thought can Chrome OS cant become a global hit especially in small countries where internet is very fickle? But leaving these things aside its going to be win-win situation for the users and it will be interesting to witness the war between giants. Posted by: Krishna Santani | July 8, 2009 11:39 AM Leave a comment Sign in to comment on this entry. 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