I ordered an Acer chromebook (the wifi one) a couple of days ago to experiment with. Should get here next Wednesday or Thursday. Daughter was wanting to get one last year to use in college and I talked her out of it. But the price has gone down since then, and I don't have to rely on it for anything important... and I have a professional interest also. But mostly it'll be a toy. :) Anybody here know anything about them?
I figure if I don't like it, I can install Ubuntu, and the 570 processor, 2GB RAM, HDMI port etc, is better hardware than my netbooks have. I think the "cloud thing" will work for 97% of my computing needs, but that other 3% could be a dealbreaker. (especially the printing part, and maybe NNTP)
I know that Chrome uses a stripped-down Linux under the covers. Does anyone know if one can get to the Linux shell and install native apps like Thunderbird or CUPS? What about using an external Ethernet adapter when wireless is not available but wired is? Apple has a really slick little adapter that plugs into USB port, but I probably need to get something more generic to have any chance of finding a driver. I think Cisco makes one just like Apple's but uglier and a little bigger.
And will it play my MP4 movies that I have stored on a SD memory card while offline? Seems like the browser should be able to handle that.
