Chromebook; too ahead of its time or just a stupid idea?

Just watched the full hour or so of the 2011 Google I/O conference and the mentioned Chromebooks. Now I've only looked at them briefly before watching the conference and have to say I'm not exactly sold on the concept.

Sundar Pichai mentioned there will be no need to worry about virus protection, as if the Developers sitting there forgot about the Chinese security risk this year (http://news.priyo.com/tech/2011/06/0...aho-28030.html) He also mentioned that by default all data is encrypted. Now Google may not be Sony but leaving everything on the cloud is in fact still a risk.

Anyway, I'm getting a little offtopic. Basically the Chromebook is a brick that connects to the internet to perform basic functions. Basically it's just sooped up version of Chrome.

During the demo, it appears that you couldn't really do ANYTHING without uploading it to the cloud :mellow: Must suck for countries with data caps :frusty:

btw video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiYND_zvIc0

I have a couple of tablets that do this. Even bought a bluetooth keyboard just in case I need to do a lot of typing. Basically, that turns it into a chromebook.

I don't think Chromebook is really useful. Sure I use Internet a lot, but without other options this tablet it's pretty useless to me.

Vulnerability regarding chrome OS was addressed again in defcon 19 and black hat 2011 but as far battery time and apps integrated in to the OS is concerned its pretty good.