Google Gears, and the real power game

[jducoeur]

There's a fascinating little article over on TechCrunch, on the subject of Google Gears. If you're doing Web development, and like me had assumed that Gears was just a way to do caching for offline capability, it's well worth reading. Google is playing a much bigger and more important game than it appears at first blush, and Gears is starting to look more like a serious first step towards blending the client and the cloud.

Really, it's a smart medium-term game: it makes the thin client look really viable. It's taken decades to get there, but I am seriously considering that my next computer may be nothing *but* a thin client: a low-power notebook whose main purpose is to hold a browser. Gears is adding exactly the sort of functionality needed to make a "smart client" that really hums: local databases, multi-threading support, local page generation and so on. Microsoft's worst fears -- that Google would start turning into an "online operating system" -- are starting to look very real...

Comments

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

A comment: Make sure that your 'thin client' has enough power to do flash video (a la hulu) and you should be set. That's the only place where the eeepc really isn't up to snuff for most 'real' web client stuff these days...

[jducoeur]

Interesting. Does the eee fail flash video in general, or only full-screen? If it's the latter, I'll have to think about how much I care: while it seems important in principle, in practice I *very* rarely give a damn. If it was going to be my only machine I might care more, but I'm more thinking about a super-low-end Linux netbook to compliment a halfway decent Linux desktop machine, and that doesn't need a lot of power.

Really, I'm mostly looking for a more practical machine to replace what I'm currently using my "Fischer-Price laptop" (the XO) for. While the XO is a delightful toy, and has real uses (it's the only machine I can take camping with me), its limitations are a little too apparent in practice. The keyboard is *terrible*, it takes *ages* to boot, and the UI is just a bit too weird. So I'm thinking in terms of a ~$300 machine that doesn't suck *as* badly in any of those respects, and I suspect it can be done, from what I'm hearing...

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

I have the oldest eee you can get, I think (the 701?), and it fails on almost all flash video somewhat (choppy), and on full screen flash video quite horribly. However, a newer eee (one of the 900s, maybe?) might not fail at all: It's clearly limited by CPU speed, which I'm assuming is still following Moore's Law.

All in all, I've been relatively happy with it, though if you have big hands, there's a fair chance the keyboard won't be big enough. (i've heard the complaint from a number of people, but also the opposite from a number of people who love the smaller keyboard.) I don't know what the price on the 900s is; the 701s can probably be had used for around $300 these days... and I can't recommend anything else for the price/form factor, which I do absolutely adore. Flash video is just the only place that I've found myself feeling the lack of a bit more 'oomph'.

[jducoeur]

though if you have big hands, there's a fair chance the keyboard won't be big enough.

Not a problem here. I mean, while I don't *like* the XO's keyboard, I'm capable of using it, which many adults aren't. My hands are pretty small.

I suspect I won't really love the Eee's keyboard, but I don't love any laptop's -- I've spent many, many years on the Microsoft Natural, so any conventional keyboard feels cramped to me. So long as it's not one of the *super*-tiny ones, I can probably deal with it.

Anyway, thanks for the info. One of these days, when finances aren't quite so tight (or if I do wind up starting to do some consulting), I'll probably shop around the netbook market, which seems to be heating up...