When I first took a look at Chromebooks I thought they were a complete waste of time and money but now that I've had a second look and I'm starting to see some sense and value there.
Really? So, when you're not connected to the internet, what is it then? Just an expensive brick, or is there some other offline functionality I'm missing?
I'm sorry, but native applications / operating systems are always going to have that superior experience / functionality, at least in my opinion. Plus, with the news that MS is getting back into reduced cost netbooks, what is going to be the need for this? Don't get me wrong, web applications have their useful, cross platform uses, but what's the excuse when the OS itself is basically a glorified web application? Where's the cross platform functionality if its proprietary itself? I thought cross platform was the whole idea behind the push to the web? I still consider this a poor, cheap nock off OS, with the added luxury of having Google know everything about you and their attempt to get you to expand your infinitesimally small SSD offering that comes with these things, by purchasing their Google Drive offering. Or offering all those handy adverts peppering their services. The OS may be free, thus the cheaper "laptop" offering, but that's not where they make their money out of you, no, that's all reserved for their "value added" services!!!
I can only speak from my family's experience, but when our chromebooks are offline, they are used as portable media devices. when our windesktop is offline, it is not used at all ( since its only use now is online games ).
as far as "superior experience" goes, I guess that depends on what it is used for. again, I can only speak from my family's use, but when it comes to my kids / wife, they just work.my job as house IT guy has been reduced to unplugging the modem/router on occasion. no more "slow pc" issues, no more reformatting/reinstalling os due to kids "clicking thru " stuff. granted, my last experience with ms was vista ( desktop still on xp ), and maybe things have improved on that front, dont know, dont care. all I know is that with our chromebooks that problem has been eliminated. with us, a superior experience is all about the thing working, not about native apps.
as far as the "os" goes, again, for us, it really makes no difference on who makes it/its capabilities as long as it does what we need it to do, and so far, it has exceeded my expectations. for us, the added luxury is not having to worry about security issues. no more antivirus / malware / firewall / registry blocker programs to setup / update. no more os upgrade costs/expenses. ( note we did have to spend an extra $48 on a cloud ready printer ).
I did think storage would be an issue, but my kids solved that with usb sticks, and only seem to use google drive / dropbox / ms onedrive as a way to transfer files from phones to chromebooks and back.
productivity wise, kids do all their homework ( reports / research / presentations ). not sure what apps they use, but whatever they are, they are getting the job done ( according to last report cards ).
for me, my company uses all web based stuff, so everything I need to do can be competed thru any browser. one thing I did notice was when using vista/xp/win7 , was company website launched a security program b4 I could access anything. it didnt do that with the chromebook.
since we dont use gmail ( use our isp webmail ), whatever info google collects on us is no different than when we use chrome on our phones and ipads. for us, that is a non issue.
bottom line in our household is ms lost a long time customer, and I see nothing on the horizon that will change that.