Google's new Chrome OS operating system, which is designed to bypass computer hard drives and work totally by way of the Internet, got its first public preview today.

The system, due out about a year from now, could eventually pose the first real competition for Microsoft's and Apple's consumer operating systems since the earliest days of home computers. Chrome's main difference is that applications and other materials that now exist on hard drive will instead live online.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times. [1]