About a month with the CR-48

I got my CR-48 back on December 26, so I’ve had a while now to get used to it. Overall, I’m quite happy. There’s very little I do in my daily work that I can’t do with it, even though it’s nothing more than a web browser and a bare-bones terminal. That said, this wouldn’t be a very interesting post without some complaints.

Flash.

I’ve complained about Flash before, but this is, far and away, the worst thing about the CR-48. Watching Flash videos works, but I’ve seen slide projectors move from frame to frame faster than Hulu on the CR-48. It’s painful enough that I still use my MacBook Pro for almost all videos.

Sound.

This only became an issue after a software update a few weeks ago, but audio gets messed up on my CR-48 a fair amount. All I usually have to do to fix it each time is close and re-open the screen, but it’s still a bit of a pain. I have no doubt that Google will fix this one soon enough, though.

SSH keys.

I know, this one is a bit technical, but I really wish the CR-48 could store my SSH keys for me so I didn’t have to remember my passwords to the various servers I need to access. I usually just reference my email for those passwords, but since the CR-48 terminal doesn’t support copy-and-paste, it takes some time to manually type them out each time (and one or two alt-tabs in the process). Sure, an argument can be made that it’s a security problem to store SSH keys on a computer that’s meant to be completely in-the-cloud and disposable, but if I otherwise have to resort to storing my passwords in Gmail, how is this any better?

Flash.

I really cannot emphasize this one enough. It is painful. It is really, truly, terribly painful to try to watch anything but slow-moving instructional videos on my CR-48.

Other than those issues, though, I can’t think of much else to complain about; the CR-48 has certainly become my computer of choice for most of the day.