However, how many people use netbooks? Admittedly a large number, but how does that number measure up to desktop/laptop/PDA/phone users? I haven’t seen the actual numbers, but judging from how many people I know use netbooks, I don’t think it will make a significant splash in the general population. Among technophiles, probably. But I don’t see it changing the game significantly. It might make netbooks usable, but that’s about the extent as far as I can see.

You can see some of the more mainstream response at http://www.newsy.com/videos/google_gears_up_for_os in case you don’t believe me.

For me there are desktops/laptops and smartphones.
This could be the Android killer for the MID/smartphone space but nothing more. As the first commenter said – this is an advanced better webOS for stronger/next-gen MIDs/smartphones.

I don’t think this is an accurate characterization of what users should expect. A large part of what this is likely to do will certainly involve, “heavy lifting on the user’s netbook,” as much of any useful functionality and UI on Chrome OS is going to come from JavaScript, or other code, running directly on the client. The assertion that, “most of the user experience takes place on the web,” just means that users will be moslty limited in what they can do on Chrome OS to those things they can do through a browser.

my guess? chrome as done relatively well but Android has not lived up to expectations in either functionality or popularity so they came up with this have baked idea at the last second to try & make inroads to Windows.

truth is, this is just another dumbed-down simplified mobile OS. problem is, when people get in front of a real PC they want to have the full experience not a mobile experience. Windows is too advanced, too functional, too market saturated, for a mobile OS to try & take its place (they will deny thats their goal, but thats what losers always say after theyve lost).

Tal

But it’s academic anyway, I don’t plan to ever buy another netbook anyway.