Extra shiny thing
Business blog Venture Beat is citing multiple sources as confirming that Acer will unveil the first device to use Google's browser-based Chrome OS at Computex in a couple of weeks.
This is consistent with a rumour doing the rounds late last year that Acer would be the first to launch a Chrome OS device and that it would appear in Q2 of this year.
However, considering Google has always insisted that it won't be ready until the end of this year at the earliest, we have to assume this will be a pretty soft launch, assuming it happens.
Chrome OS will be an entirely cloud-based OS, accessed via the Chrome browser. It is supposedly designed with netbooks in mind but all the buzz is around tablets in the ‘in-between' category these days, so we wouldn't be surprised to see it in one of those.
That just leaves one more mystery: how will it co-exist with Android? Google's mobile OS is expected to feature strongly in other tablets unveiled at Computex and it makes us wonder what outstanding need Google thinks Chrome OS will address. Hopefully things will become clearer in a couple of weeks.
