My Insights
1) Boot up & Login
You can login using either your regular Gmail account or your Google apps account. You can even sign in when there is no network connection. Presumably you would have had to sign in once with the network on but from there on outwards the OS seems to cache your credentials.
Boot up was under 15 seconds on all attempts with a VMware configured with 256MB RAM and 1 Processor at 2.4 GHz. From login screen to home screen took under 5 seconds on all attempts.
2) Inside the OS
Upon the first login, Chrome OS opens up 2 tabs that would be most commonly used: Mail & Calendar. However after resetting the machine chromium only displayed the Google home screen. The homepages are configurable (See configuration options below)
There is a button on the top left that seems to be the equivalent of a “Start” button in windows. However you need a “@google.com” account to access any “Google Short Links” here. Neither my Gmail account nor my Google Apps account worked here.
3) Configuration Options
Configuration options can be accessed from the top right drop down menu. Looks like Google is planning on supporting other browsers besides just chrome based upon the second configuration screen.
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So chrome OS is like a broswer application? no desktop type thing? What about 3rd party applications?
I couldn’t find a way to get access to a terminal window. Even if you close all the tabs in chrome, it simply restarts and opens the home tab for you.
I did however see that there was a way to select your download location and going through that dialog let me peek at the underlying file system structure.