InfoWorld — Computers and their software today are too complicated, and users are increasingly looking at iPads and cloud-based services such as Google Docs to handle the basics that most of us stick to: document editing, photo management, emailing, Web browsing, and the like. Running Office on a PC or Mac is beyond overkill for most people. Google (GOOG) proposes we do away with the PC altogether, at least part of the time, and replace it with Google's cloud-based laptop -- an appliance in which the Chrome browser serves as operating system. With the Chrome OS, all actions occur in the browser and the cloud.

Google announced Chrome OS in July 2009, formally introduced it 13 months ago, and then went silent. Last week, it re-introduced Chrome OS and this time gave an ETA for the real thing: mid-2011. It also distributed prototype "Chromebook" laptops to people like me for ongoing testing of what Google CEO Eric Schmidt said would be an alternative to both Windows and Mac OS X. I've now had some quality time with that laptop, its Chrome OS, and the early apps available for the platform.

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Chrome OS could be an option for grandmas and office drones: people who do very basic tasks, have a single email account, don't often share documents and data with other applications, don't use professional features such as revisions tracking when editing documents, and work with just forms. At this stage, the Web apps available for Web browsers such as Chrome OS -- including Microsoft Office Web Apps, Google Docs, and the first apps available at Google's new Chrome Web Store -- are rudimentary at best. And they don't play well with each other.

Unless Google and others succeed in developing really compelling Web apps that also operate with the rest of the Web, I believe the concept of a cloud laptop will fail. Yes, Office and many other apps are way too complicated, but Chrome apps are today way too simplistic and limited. I would point Google and Chrome developers to the apps you see on the iPad as examples of a better balance between simplicity and capability, where sophistication is not sacrificed.

It's clear that Google still has a long way to go to make Chrome OS viable; six months out from formal rollout, the operating system and the apps are in no way ready for prime time. I'm frankly surprised how primitive it all is half a year away from launch, but Google did warn that it has work to do. Maybe there's a lot going on behind the scenes that will quckly come together to make Chrome OS worth considering when it is formally released. Anyhow, keep Chrome OS' early nature in mind -- the prototype laptops, for example, aren't even running a beta version of the Chrome 9 browser that they'll ship with, but instead use a version of today's Chrome 8 browser.

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