14 DAY TRIAL // Google Chrome OS may not be available to users just yet, but Google is not wasting any time in driving home the main selling points of the upcoming operating system. The biggest promise, of course, is the possibility of having everything online and available everywhere, anytime - making the machine you're using irrelevant. And what better way of proving that than by destroying a bunch of Cr-48 netbooks.
Google's ordered some 60,000 of these to send out to employees, developers and early adopters, so maybe it's got a few to spare for a grimmer fate.
Of course, those that haven't gotten a Cr-48 netbook but maybe would have liked to, despite the obvious and much talked about flaws in the hardware and software, may cringe a little as the poor netbooks get set on fire, electrocuted, driven over, shot, smashed, eaten by zombies and generally abused in creative fashions.
"Here at the Demo Lab we have only one mission: to protect your data no matter what happens to your computer. To serve this mission we have been evaluating our Cr-48 prototype notebooks in challenging, some might say extreme, conditions," an entry on the Chrome Blog read.
"We’ve been in the lab testing notebooks exhaustively (I'm talking 24 hours a day here). But, to try out as many notebooks as possible, we’re opening up the lab to the public today," it continued.
"Are you ready to help take the Cr-48 through its paces? If you are up to this challenge, take these mean machines through explosions, carbicide, and destruction by ravenous zombies at google.com/demolab," it added.
Even if you do feel a bit sorry for the poor laptops being sacrificed in the name of entertainment <strike> science, some of the ways the Chrome OS machines are destroyed are pretty funny.
The Demo Lab website takes some cues from a hugely popular YouTube ad you may remember, A Hunter Shoots a Bear, which enabled users to choose what said hunter did to the bear. You can check it out here if you haven't seen it already.
In Demo Lab, a Gmail-style chat window pops up and asks you for suggestions on how the netbooks should be destroyed. Go ahead and let your imagination loose, you'd be surprised to see what the Google team has come up with and how many possible ways to kill a laptop there are.
Some suggestions you might like: shock it, run it over, fire, shoot it, woman (yes, it's even got 'death by woman' covered), robot, zombie, ninja star, nuclear, voodoo (one of the funniest) and plenty of others. If you've got some time to sink, Demo Lab is got you covered.
