I hate to be negative, especially given how coveted CR-48s are/were, but after about a week of getting mine I just had to put Ubuntu on it. Yeah, I spend 70% of my time in the browser, but I just can't give up that other 30% (dev stuff). It's not really worth having a laptop for me without a decent text editor/full ssh capabilities.<p>It might serve the masses well, but my point is if you're the type of person who would make your own you're probably better off not doing so.
<i>and at around $400 for a Chromebook, you would certainly expect some better hardware than what Samsung and Acer are offering.</i><p>I think the low-ball hardware is very deliberate. If Google can prove this level of hardware can work just fine for it's purpose, it disrupts the market further. For $700+ you could definitely get better hardware than what is available on the iPad or iPad 2, but you certainly pay more for that device, don't you?
> and to top it off, you'll have a spare Windows 7 license that you can give to your mom<p>I'm pretty sure it won't work that way (legally). That license is very unlikely to be transferable for use on any machine other than the one it was bought with.
I think the price difference <i>may</i> be accountable for in the specs. Most of today's netbooks come with spinning drives, and an SSD upgrade would cost $50-$100 more.