The current web "platform" that we have ( HTML/CSS/JS ), even in it's best, is a mess, influenced by many poorly thought out designs by random companies over that last 20 years. So an operating system that makes heavy using of that is going to be a PITA to work with.

On the bright side, it will require even higher hardware requirements to get decent performance, so everybody else that isn't using it will be happy with the new higher powered computers being created.

I can't imagine why anybody would want Chrome OS. All it does is to allow me to do less with my computer than I can under Windows, OS X or Linux. Chrome should be alongside an OS, not instead of it.

If Google manage to make this work I suspect it will be in a very different form to what it is now.

What benefits do you get except for a faster boot time? I like to do more than surf the web, and I prefer being able to do work stuff even if I don't have an internet connection...

And if there's a problem with The Cloud, you're pretty screwed and can't access your data. A rare occurance, perhaps but not unheard of either.

I like the way that you capitalize "The Cloud"!

Google is already extremely powerful and this operating system would give them full control over your computer ( as long as you had their OS installed ). So if you're not worshiping Google right now, you'd better be doing that by the time you get their OS installed, or you'd risk losing your computer and all of your personal files.

Not only must The Cloud be capitalised, you must also use a deeper voice when speaking the words. :)

"On the bright side, it will require even higher hardware requirements to get decent performance, so everybody else that isn't using it will be happy with the new higher powered computers being created."

You're wrong, the machines designed to browse the web, check email, and do simple office tasks will be lower spec. They wouldn't be able to do anything fancy (though they will be able to watch youtube videos and such like... play music, upload photos... these things don't need high specs - you will not be able to play high-end games, casual web games like this one will still do most of their processing on the server side.)

The only issue i have with using google at the moment is that gmail doesn't seem to have any support for encrypting emails...

I would use one, but only assuming the machine was a cheaper alternative which i could develop js/html/php/css on. (actually i'd need to run apache so maybe i wouldn't use one...)

oh and this is the camera industries equivalent of a throw away camera. Cheap, low spec, easy to use, less can go wrong, (all the features live in The Cloud) - it is not the equivalent of a high-end super camera with 100s of additional features which i'm not sure how to use...

I wonder when they going to start making disposable computers? I guess you'd throw it away when the battery runs out?

I heard that some Korean manufacturer was considering building a hand held computer with a fuel cell powering it and it was supposed to last for about 30 days ( @ 24 hours/day ). That might be a good candidate for a disposable computer.

It'd be great if Chrome could be virtualized.

Haha! Did you know that people get so excited about virtualization, that they've actually created a VM that runs in a VM? Seriously, how much virtualization do people need?

http://code.google.com/p/kahlua/

Not much, just a little. I run multiple VMs to test things out so that I don't mess up my host.

My friend and I were talking and comparing browsers/oses to things. These were the analogies.

Firefox is a tank.
IE is a plane.
Chrome is a spy.

Windows is a tank.
OSX is a PR guy.
Chrome OS (Will be) a spy.
Linux is a hacker. :-)

All have their uses. But I think that fits the personality of each pretty well. And of course you wouldn't want Chrome OS as your only OS, but it would be pretty legit...

I'm enjoying windows 7, but I'll probably fool around with it.
The Chrome browser is great, but I've been having issues lately, I like it better than any alternatives though.