Pthread writes:

- Early indications are not that netbooks are a struggling market. Quite the contrary, they’ve seen explosive growth.

- I think you are missing the point of a netbook David, they aren’t meant to be a primary machine. They are meant to be what you take with you to class, work, or the coffee shop to do a little surfing and get some work done. So any attempt to imply that this is meant to be someone’s mainstream machine, or that this is something they are trying to sell to everyone, would be misleading.

- Netbooks != thin clients. Not the same thing, at all. Neither in intended function or how they are set up.

The only thing you touched on that I agree with is internet connectivity, but that has less to do with chrome os than with the google app’s model in general. Degrading gracefully when internet connectivity is lost is going to be the key.

Incidentally, I recently bought a MacBook Air. I’m really pleased because it’s a step above a netbook, but much lighter than my MacBook Pro was (which was already light compared to its competitors). For me it hits a specific niche that I like. But that’s because it’s my *only* machine. For people who have a desktop at home, a netbook can be a perfect compliment.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the many differences between the way google does thing and the way Microsoft does things. Google is a participant in the free software eco-system, taking and giving. As a result companies everywhere benefit.

Microsoft is the opposite, with a track history of trying to suppress free software, to the detriment of everyone.

And B. Minich writes:

I’m very skeptical of netbooks, but not because I think people don’t want a smaller, thinner client. They do. But in the long run, as they are able to do more and more, people are going to go to smart phones.

Take the iPhone as an example. Look at what it can do already. Before long, it is going to do what the laptop used to do – be the smaller, portable computer you use on the road, checking email and so forth. Netbooks are going to be left out because they will be more expensive than smart phones, but limited as laptops (most people will just want to spend a few hundred more for the real thing).

With regarding to the iPod dilemma, Google could always release its own music player… the gPod. Or GooglePod. Though that sounds vaguely like an alien spaceship. :)

On a more serious note, you mentioned video editing, but photo manipulation is also a big deal. Lots of people whose computer activity is mostly in “the cloud” are big Flickr users, no? The Google OS (which I think they should call GOOS, pronounced “Goose,” but nobody listens to me) will need to have some sort of lightweight, perhaps explicitly Flickr-based, photo management tool, methinks.