[spinchange]

The hardware will be cheaper. These things run on ARM processors and a free Linux kernel / firmware. With a few OEMs on board, I think that it's absolutely feasible to see these things around $99 - (perhaps free if paired with Wireless carrier and a data contract)

Think about that for a second: A $99 'laptop' that you don't need to worry about upgrading or going out of date like a regular PC, that has a much longer battery life, is lighter, smaller, and 'just works' for it's intended purpose better than a PC.

It sounds nuts, but after having used one of these for the last week, I am more convinced than ever that Microsoft/Intel is in big trouble unless they do something pretty radical and perhaps painful to their immediate existing business.

*edit -- I've just read that Cr-48 runs Atom. I was told it was an ARM chip. Certainly the chipset requirements factor into my argument here.

[tygorius]

Yep, from the beta samples it appears they're using commodity hardware, so the only savings will be the Windows tax. Basically, if you took the original Asus 701 netbook and made some upgrades (7" -> 12" screen; 600 MHz Centrino -> 1.6 GHz Atom; 500 MB -> 2 GB RAM; 4 GB -> 16 GB flash drive) you'd have the Cr-48 specs.

Asus differentiates its wide range of netbooks with price point variations based on different battery specs, hard drive size, Bluetooth, etc.

The only variation I can see for commercial roll-out would be in, say, the 3G module added by a particular service provider. Given what has happened with the added "features" of some Android devices, I'm not sure that a Verizon-specific Chromebook would be a big seller. A vendor-specific would seem to lead to contracts and account personalization details that would kill the anonymity focus of the device.