I've now been playing with it for a couple days. In fact I'm writing this blog entry from it. The hardware is nothing to jump for joy about, but it is kind of nice having a laptop without any manufacturing labels. I also like that I now have a laptop with a webcam. It has a SSD, not that you can access it, but it does make things snappy, light, quiet, and doesn't suck a lot of power.
The operating system is basically the Chrome web browser, except you can't minimize or even shrink the window. It's always at full size. Since I actually do most of my day to day computing from my iPhone, this isn't a huge stretch to be in the cloud. And as Google Docs becomes more and more powerful, it will allow this to further be a production device and not a consumption device.
Right now, the biggest problem I see with a netbook that is solely internet based is with media. No, you can't be a power user and actually think the Chrome OS setup would work for you. I get that. But I'm thinking of your average Joe Blow. You can do photos to some extent. You can store them online and there are online photo editors out there. They aren't quite as powerful as the desktop variety, but it still exists. Video becomes a challenge as you are relegated to what already exists on the internet. You can't have anything of your own. And the bigger one is music. You can listen to Pandora or any other variety of online music stations, but iTunes is still the biggest kid on the music block. Until iTunes moves to the cloud, there is no way to access your own music and no way to sync your iPhone/iPod.
So you still need a computer at home. But this could definitely be the computer to take with you to coffee shops, or to class, or any other short trips like that. I'm not sure it's ready to become the only device you own.
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