Kogan launches first Chromium OS device in Australia

Kogan launches Australia's first Chromium device (Credit: Kogan)

Kogan has this morning revealed that from today, they’ll begin selling the world’s first laptop running Chromium OS, the open-source edition of Google’s Chrome OS which is yet to hit any devices in Australia.

Kogan launches Australia's first Chromium device (Credit: Kogan)

Available through Kogan’s online web store from today in Australia and the United Kingdom for $349, the laptop will feature a 30GB Solid State Drive (SSD) and boast a startup time of just 4.5 seconds.

Other specifications include a 1.30 GHz Intel Celeron M ULV Processor, 11.6″ LCD display, 1.3Mp webcam, built-in wireless and Bluetooth support and a three-in-one SD/MMC/MS Pro card slot.

As mentioned above, it’ll also be the first device to ship to Australians (in fact world-wide) running the open source edition of Google’s upcoming Chrome OS — a cloud-centric operating system which operates on the idea of storing and running everything from “the cloud”, or the Internet.

“What we’ve found from talking to our customers is that many of them are already using cloud services without even realising it,” Ruslan Kogan, founder of Kogan said in a statement.

“They’re uploading photos to services like Flickr, storing all their contacts in Gmail, and even hosting files on DropBox.”

For Australians keen to get their hands on a device running Chrome OS, for now Kogan’s Chromium OS device may be the closest bet, with Google still remaining coy on when the official Chrome OS netbooks will arrive Down Under.

Google warned in 2009 however that Chromium OS is essentially their “developer build”, saying that the main distinction between Chrome OS and Chromium OS is that “Chromium OS is the open source project, used primarily by developers, with code that is available for anyone to checkout, modify and build their own version with.”