What sells me on the netbook is that I have 100GB of space for the life of computer, not for the 2 years after I buy my netbook.

At 250 bucks and the rate at which technology advances you'll probably be tempted to swap it out before 2 years is up.

For what it does, there is no reason to need to swap it out in the next two years.

Agreed, and nowadays for ~$250 it's an 11+" screen at 1366x786, with 250GB drive.

We really shouldn't be encouraging more garbage in our dumps...

Despite having a few other my portable devices my original single-core atom netbook (that came with XP!) is still one of the most remarkably useful devices I own.

I sort of lament how useless my Android tablet is in comparison. It's by far a better device for consumption but nothing beats a full desktop experience (even at a laughably low resolution).

This also probably runs a lot better with this chip and ChromeOS. I have one of those old netbooks myself with Windows 7, and the experience is very frustrating. You can't even switch to a different Chrome tab sometimes because the CPU is too busy loading another tab.

I have the 1st gen Chromebook with an atom and the experience is the same, laggy.

The last Chromebook (which I used as a Google Intern, so take with a pinch of salt) wasn't laggy at all. They're a lot better since Rev 1.

I've been using a i5 Windows 7 box for some office work and it has been, by far, the worst desktop experience I had in years. For other activities, I'm using a first gen Acer netbook running Ubuntu on an Atom processor and it's much smoother.

The Atom is not the problem here.

So they're lying when they say it can play 1080p videos - the screen is barely larger than 720.

1080p is via the HDMI port, I reckon.

Yeah, that was the first thing I looked at on the specs. I was amazed they were going to include a 1080p screen in this machine.

I think that's very misleading. The average consumer is just going to take that claim at face value and believe they are getting a 1080p screen.

agreed. Totally misleading

Is Dell lying when they say their desktops can play 1080p? They don't even have a screen at all! Playing 1080p is more a gpu/cpu performance thing. Chromeboxes can do 1080p on 2 monitors, which is quite a feat considering their hardware.

At least for me, it has a nice plus. The new Chromebook is not only Windows-free, it's Windows-proof.

Not that I would want to install Windows on it, but it certainly feels nice to have a machine like that.

Aren't these Chromebooks subsidized by Google to get into mainstream? I always felt there were big tie-ups. (See Asus Nexus tablet pricing)

Unlike Microsoft, here Google pays for every device. :)

I don't think they are. The only thing that they might've subsidized (as in you get it for free) is that 100 GB of Google Drive storage, that you only get for 2 years.