You know... @cdetorres had sent me a youtube video of Google's Chromebook taking abuse, and I was going to post it here but I lost the link. Oh well. The idea was that your Chromebook might keep meeting doom, but all you need is another Chromebook to log into your Google account and you're all set, no work lost!

The concept of Chromebook seems interesting, but it's not new - it's just a rework, and improvement really, of the dumb terminal which many have tried and failed to launch after the personal computer took off. My problem is that the data is only in the cloud, and the apps are only in the cloud - which means you need ubiquitous connectivity, something that you won't always have, as anyone who travels by plane frequently knows, or someone who doesn't subscribe to mobile data plans.

The sweet spot for me lies somewhere between a conventional laptop and the Chromebook.  I want my full MacOS and apps, but I want some sort of live cloning on the web, so if my mac ever dies, I can put in my credentials and basic apps (stuff that comes with the OS for instance) is instantly available, so is my data, but additional apps, and documents I am not immediately using, just download in the background so my new laptop has reconstituted all of my data lost in the other laptop.