Chrome OS: Review of developer build

I got my hands on a VM Ware .vmdk loaded with early developer release of Google's Chromium OS. You can download the torrent here.

If you have ever used the Chrome browser, this operating system will feel comfortable..because the Chrome browser is the heart of the Chromium OS. Although you can log in to Chromium with an offline username (mark chromes), you can't really do anything.

So, I created a new Gmail account for testing (casualtechstest@gmail.com). As you can see from the screenshots below, everything is web based..even chess.

Everything is rather clean and spartan. As others have noted, there is no shutdown button. After a bit of digging and looking at the Chromium OS keyboard shortcuts, I found the answer. I decided to share my "discovery" with the Twitterverse:

Leave it to Google to actually use the power button to shut down your OS. That's right, no OS shutdown button. Just hit the power button.

Other interesting shortcuts included opening a terminal window (CTRL + ALT + T) or print (CTRL + P). Hit F8 when Chromium OS is running to view the shortcuts available via the CTRL, ALT or SHIFT keys.

As I noted in the beginning, this is a developer build. It will be interesting to see how this project continues to progress. You can read more or get involved with the Chromium OS at http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os.