Google's Chrome computing system to debut in autumn

It will be very interesting to see how this develops and what changes it will bring to peoples business models.
Personally I like the idea of a 21st century wireless hand held terminal as a window on to larger server systems were the real processing horsepower and storage is focused

This is crazy. It requires an always available connection... It's basically the iPhone as it was before Jobs allowed us to write native apps.

Something like that has its place, but unless you can write native apps (which, from what I've read about this... It's just an OS with ONE program installed... a browser), I don't see this replacing real OS's. We've already learned from the iPhone that if you want high performance and access to hardware features, you need native apps (webs apps just aren't going to cut it and can't access the local hardware).

If, on the other hand, this OS /does/ allow native apps... well, that's a whole 'nother story and I look forward to that.

Has anybody considered that this is just another way that people with power seek to take power away from individuals? We've already heard all the arguments that everybody having their own computer and software is an "inefficient" and "clumsy" way to do computing. On the other side, we're lured by the promise of jacking into the Big Computer. Personally, I don't like the idea; I'd rather keep my personal PC and software and decide when and where I want to "jack in."

vivcollins-it wont make changes to the business model. Business models only change slightly over years to encompass different sales mechanisms and the like, and the technology to support that idea is designed around that. Google does not currently have (and will not for some time) have a method to make their systems controllable for a company infrastructure (something a kin to group policy in Windows)....this will keep them well below microsoft until they can introduce similar functionality. Since it is not a full OS, so to speak, this will take some time....
Also, the technology you speak of already exists. I frequently check on servers via native Microsoft RDP sessions via my mobile phone....I *think* Citrix has this functionality for mobile devices as well, which should allow for app access from the phone. Not a Citrix guy though, so don't quote me on the Citrix thing :)