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Chrome OS is a huge step in the right direction for Google. The changes to the user interface are sweeping and critical to its chances of being a success and have been implemented well.
The file system remains fiddly and different enough from its competitors to make it a little confusing at first, and offline functionality and the closed App environment remain problematic.
But, in one fell swoop, Chrome OS has become a good deal more acceptable to the mass market and a giant leap towards becoming an acceptable second machine.
The offline Google Docs access and the Google Drive integration are critical updates for Chrome OS, but if we take Google at its word then it is a matter of weeks before this is rolled out.
Chrome OS has been hit with some fierce criticism in its short lifetime – some merited and some mean – but this incarnation answers several of its most difficult questions acceptably, if not perfectly.
You can't help but feel this is the state that Chrome OS should have launched in rather than where it is a year on, but if it improves as much in the next 12 months we may well have a viable new computing system coming to our lives.
Unless it's swallowed by Android before then, of course.
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