Fiddling with our CR-48 some more - Part 1 of ?

Two weeks since receiving the CR-48, I am trying out a few things on it today. The CR-48 performance has really degraded, especially with multiple tabs open. I am looking for solutions to improve the performance, but so far have found none. The CR-48 help forum, with its 1000+ posts, is formidable to navigate; it is filled with a lot of chatter from those that haven't received a CR-48 yet, and the search function for specific posts simply doesn't work.

My list for today

• Ctrl + Alt + T brings up the Terminal window. I need to brush up on my unix commands before I mess around there. For the time being, 'q' works for 'quit' and 'exit' quits the terminal.


• Shift + Esc brings up a rudimentary task manager, which one can use to close applications running in the background.


• V8 Benchmark Suite version 6 - abysmal scores (I got 776) with tabs open and extensions running; with all background processes stopped, extensions and plugins disabled, the score came up to a measly 1174! WTF? Besides, why would I run the Chrome browser with all necessary extensions disabled? From the Help forums, it appears that if I switch to the dev channel, I may get better performance.


• The Chrome browswer now has WebGL support. What is WebGL? From Google's official blog:
  

  "WebGL is a new technology which brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the browser. With WebGL in Chrome, you can experience rich 3D experiences right inside the browser with no need for additional software. Curious about the three-dimensional possibilities? Try out these demos to experience the power of WebGL in the latest stable version of Chrome: Chrome experiments."

  Well, guess what. CR-48 doesn't support WebGL yet (date checked: 2/20/11). Which means you cannot use the CR-48 to look at cool Google stuff like the 3D Body Browswer. Funny thing is that this and many other Chrome related websites don't recognize the CR-48 as running the Chrome browser! To add insult to injury, "the graphics hardware in the Cr-48 is not very powerful, so more demanding WebGL applications will run slowly" (No shit, Sherlock!) - according to a Google staffer.


• Although the Chrome browser has progressed to higher stable versions, the Chrome OS is saddled with an older browser version: Chrome OS 0.9.130.14 (Official Build ce79fb21) beta x86-mario comes with Google Chrome 8.0.552.344. Apparently, to get the higher browser version, I need to update the Chrome OS to the dev channel. This is easily done by changing an option in Chrome settings, but apparently, reverting to the beta channel in case of trouble is too much of a bother. I shall try it out one of these days.