Make it $100-$150, and I'll buy it. As it stands though, its too much money and too little benefits.
[1]http://www.thechromesource.com/with-what-it-costs-to-make-is...
His expectations aren't off, the manufacturing limitations just don't meet them.
Which would be silly because their "OS" is much more limited than Windows 7, even the Starter version, and its only compelling feature would be to run on much cheaper hardware.
These things would sell like hotcakes for $200 and Google would grow in users and advertising revenue. I was just surprised that they're selling near netbook prices considering they're limited devices and tied so tightly into Google Services. I don't see them disrupting the mobile device industry with Chromebooks unless they decide that # of users is much more important than profit per sale.
When I first tried out the Chromebook, I thought the same thing about price. But I'm pretty sure Microsoft licenses Windows for these netbooks VERY cheaply, so there's not much price to be shaved by swapping out the OS.
To hit a significant price difference Chromebooks would have to skimp on the hardware compared to their Windows/Linux counterparts. The Chromebook I have already struggles with flash, so without dropping support for that completely I don't think there's much to trim off the CPU end of things. There's a little room to skimp on the HD compared to Windows, but not a ton. So basically I don't see any route other than being ad supported, rentals or some other type of Google subsidy for Chromebooks to actually become cheaper than the low end of the netbook segment.
Functionality-wise, yes there's no reason you couldn't get linux on par with Chrome from a leanness standpoint by just stripping out services and booting into the browser.
A little off topic, but I find it interesting to note that what Apple has gotten in exchange for the flak they got for not including Flash on the iPad is that they don't have any reviews like this. People consider the iPad to have good performance.
If Google had taken the same route and left out Flash, not only might they have more room to trim the CPU, it might be a better value proposition performance-wise.
In addition, with the focus on enterprise and education, I believe that Chromebooks had to support flash as a requirement.
Better to just buy a largish netbook (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220...) and install Chrome OS on it. (http://moreinews.com/google-chrome-os-review-notebook-tablet...)