Cr48 impressions so far

I've been using the Cr48 as my "main" computer for the two days (ish) and so far I'm rather impressed. The critics are right - it is basically a browser in a box, but a very well put together one. I'm a little surprised at just how much of my normal daily computing I'm accomplishing on this, but there are a few things that are missing and/or that I'm not thrilled with...

As I mentioned in my first post about the Cr48, I would really like bluetooth support so I could use my new bluetooth mouse, but at least USB mouse support is there. The trackpad is the issue for me - I don't particularly like trackpads in general, but in particular, the Cr48 doesn't disable the trackpad while typing and I tend to brush the trackpad while I'm typing. I tried using the trackpad without tap-to-click, but that made things like "right" clicking difficult, which is accomplished by tapping with two fingers simultaneously. I find that I have to tap quite a bit harder to right-click than to left-click. I also find it cumbersome to click and drag with this trackpad.

I tried watching a WMV file yesterday, but Chrome OS doesn't seem to have a way to handle it built-in. When I clicked the file it downloaded, but clicking the file in the "Downloads" window gives the error "Unknown file type." I tried installing the extension "Embed WMPlayer inline" but this gives a missing plug-in error. I was able to upload one of the WMV files to YouTube and watch it there, but this is hardly a good permanent solution. I also tried downloading a pure-java program as well, but unsurprisingly trying to open the zip file gives the same "Unknown file type" error.

One of the other things that I'm less than thrilled about is that I have to check each of my four email accounts separately. I have my GMail account, two Google Apps email addresses and a student email account for my grad program. On my other computers I use Thunderbird and it's "Unified Folders" view that shows me the contents of all four inboxes in a single listing. In Chrome OS I can't find a way to do that and instead have four separate windows open all the time that I have to flip between. I tried a couple of quick searches in the chrome web store, but I don't see anything helpful...

Even though the last three paragraphs are criticisms, I'm overall very happy with this machine. The speed of going to sleep and waking up is by itself rather amazing. I'm realizing now that with my Ubuntu laptop I actively avoid closing the lid because I've been having problems with it not sleeping properly. I've been thinking about a fresh re-install for this very reason. In fact, the slowest part about waking up my Cr48 is waiting for my wifi connection to be re-established.