Chrome OS: Internet Failing At PC PC Failing At Internet

"...five ChromeOS portables are five caches for the same cloud-based user and application data..."

I think this is the real killer-app here: having all of your data (documents, pictures, music, movies, etc.) in ONE place accessible from ALL your devices, and impervious to failure of those devices.

Haven't we been here before. In 1996 or so both sun and oracle were hyping network pc's. That's seems to be no different than now except we have re-branded this client/server architecture "cloud computing".

I seem to recall a video where (i think ellison) was describing how your desktop would follow you no matter what pc you were sitting in front of. That is the same theme that Google had yesterday during there presentation.

As a sw engineer at one of the worlds largest aerospace and defense contractors we don't store much locally on our pc's. Our source is in SCM systems, the same with bug tracking and change requests. Most of our documents are on SANS to improve collaboration and sharing. So I guess i'm just not seeing something "entirely new" here.

The question of whether regular (non geek) consumers will just see a ChromeOS portable as a less capable netbook I think is not even a valid question. I don't know of a single 'regular' consumer who owns a Netbook and very few that even know what it might be.

So to a consumer, I think ChromeOS will be seen as something completely new.