Google’s Chrome operating system has had its code released for the first time into the public domain and has been followed with announcements of manufacturers deciding to use their system on their newest netbooks. Acer believe they will be the first company to start marketing a machine with the Chrome OS as it’s default operating system by the second half of next year.

The system boasts incredibly fast performance and low power consumption making it perfect for the netbook market which Windows 7 and Linux have been working hard to capture and hold. Chrome can boot up in as little as 7 seconds and thanks to a thorough library of web based applications for the system should be popular amongst netbook fans.

However, the problem of drivers is still one that Chrome won’t be figuring out as fast some people will have hoped. Driver support is critical to the success of any operating system and as the launch of Vista showed, it’s something even Microsoft can get wrong sometimes. Without full support for the hardware that the end user might encounter, the OS will remain dead in the water.

For devices like displays, keyboards, mice, dongles and flash drives a generic driver can usually be used by the system making compatibility with these devices pretty easy. However, there’s one commonly used device that simply can’t use generic drivers – the printer.

Google won’t yet say how they are going to deal with the problem of printer drivers, but they will say that what they’re working on could eliminate the need for drivers completely and change the way we interface with our printers on Chrome. However, it’s also reported that such a fundamental change is going to take time and in the meanwhile, Chrome won’t enjoy good printer support until as late as 2011.


Written by: Pete, who runs a website about SEO Agency