ChromeBooks in a nutshell: “The web in a computer-like object.”

Google pretty much made a statement in their announcement of the two new ChromeBook models. For the first time, it’s not the specs of these machines that matter, it’s how you experience the web — as Google wants you to. What sets these laptops apart from the usual ones? It’s not what it has… more of what it doesn’t have. For one, they don’t have any desktop software or locally stored programs. Google wants the users to experience computing in a post-desktop manner through the minimalist approach they’ve shown — and it has its benefits.

With the lack of local software, things will run in a much faster pace — as evidenced by the ChromeBooks’ 8-second startup time. Everything is in the cloud, documents, settings, programs. You can throw away your notebook and you know that your files are still safe. The main disadvantage we see here is that with everything in the cloud, access to the cloud itself is vital and if you don’t have one, functionality depending on it will be unavailable. So what do you think? Is Google’s idea of computing fit for everyone? Google tries to convince us through their ChromeBook feature page, as well as the promotional below.