Queue more repetitive comments from old farts and the tinfoil hat brigade in regard to running their Windows 3.1 wine list database software or reading all their mail.
It's not something that you would buy in a box or install on an existing desktop or laptop. It's designed around specific hardware that allows start times equivalent to a laptop waking up from sleep, and reliability so that your Bonzai buddy or drivers for your Chinese knockoff MP4 player wont render the device a shade of blue.
No doubt builds for netbooks will appear though but with a slower startup time, maybe 5-10 seconds as demonstrated by Intel's Moblin team:
it has great potential......but the fact remains. it will only be useful on a fast network (whether wifi or GOOD 3G).
it is just further utilizing cloud computing, but forgetting that it will require the network providors to improve the networks in order for this to take off. if we still are getting 2G speeds on 3HK network, then how am i supposed to access all of my content with multiple streams and such? sure...i could wait until i get to a wifi spot...but by then i may be already too late to do what it is i was supposed to do.
so in conclusion...if the networks improve reliability, coverage, and speed, where people are not dependant on wifi hotspots, then chrome OS, and all the other company iterations of cloud computing will be great.
I think like the iPhone as the device appears the networks will improve. The price encourages networks to bundle branded devices to their 3G services like the Vodaphone netbook.
Its a great idea (especially for Netbooks). I love the fact that its going to be an open source project. I wonder whether Android will give Chrome a run for its money in the netbook market.
As for the Apple tablet, we can only speculate, but I would guess that Apple will try to lead rather than follow. It won't be cheap and it won't try and compete like-for-like with anything out there on the market...
SSD or HDD... there is no internal storage for this chrome os. that's their whole point... which I just don't see it being feasible anytime soon. someone made a great article recently about google losing data in their cloud for all sidekick users and again down time for gdoc users. it's just examples that when relying on cloud computing..... you need a perfect setup or you are gonna get screwed. I just don't think we are anywheres close to having a perfect setup. Posted via Mobile Device
SSD or HDD... there is no internal storage for this chrome os.
There is storage, it's for cookies, passwords, and of course HTML 5 local storage. Example usage can be found in Gmail and Google Docs offline storage.