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Google’s Chrome OS kills Quality Time

by Ron Tolido · Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 11:50 am

No point in adding yet another platitude to the ocean of comments on Google’s announcement of Chrome OS. Guess we saw it coming. And it was hardly rocket science, I might add.

It is however worrying that Google envisions an operating system that will fire up a laptop in just a few seconds. I mean, after all these years of getting used to operating systems that take more and more time to start up, I sort of got fond of the idea of being delayed. Admitted, it’s the IT version of the Stockholm Syndrome, but I actually cherished these precious moments of being forced to do nothing. Whether Windows, OS X, or Ubuntu: while loading their endless series of kernel software modules and drivers, they all brought me valuable opportunities to meditate or to contemplate the day to come. I would watch that hourglass for many minutes and time after time it would remind me of the relativity of technology and the craziness of rush and speed. Or I would just thoroughly enjoy a strong espresso. Or I would do nothing. All justified by our commonly shared acceptance of operating systems that are so complex that they take forever to come to live.

Now Google breaks this equilibrium with Crome OS, with the promise that booting it will be a matter of seconds. It will set a trend and we should hate them for it. Or at least, we should think twice before clicking on one of these placed ads. That will teach them.

Goodbye Quality Time. I will miss you dearly.

14-7-2009 update: more discussion on ZDnet

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 11:50 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “Google’s Chrome OS kills Quality Time”

Carl
July 14th, 2009 at 6:00 am

I’m going to miss that enforced pause, too.
Delviar
June 11th, 2010 at 8:03 am

It is absolutely stupid to want computer to be slow to operate or start. I hate that behaviour of IT, that I must wait for almost every click. It would more useful for meditative and slowdown process, too, when the computer is very quick, because every things I would have done sooner and would have enough time to meditate, for example.

It is my own experience, day-to-day, tha I want to play meditative music, but before that I would like to read e-mails and save some interesting documents from net to my disk. But instead of doing it 10 minutes I do it 30 minutes, because starting OS takes 4 minutes, starting internet browser takes 1 minute, opening every post takes 10 seconds, opening MS Word takes 20 seconds, saving takes 10 seconds and through the time I read 10 e-mails and save 5 informations, I could ldrop prone on the bed, but no, i cannot, because the puases are not so big, but between almost every procedure, so it is impracical to go prone for 10 seconds every 2 minutes.

So I hate slow technology!!! I want speed, quick process, to having time for relaxing after doing something - not to “relax” during the process - it terrible.

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