[diminoten]

It makes sense for multiplayer games to not be hosted on arbitrary client boxes, but on some kind of neutral, low-latency "cloud" device (I know you said other than this, but I thought this was the biggest selling point for it in the first place).

It also makes sense for "complex" calculations. It's how stuff like Google search and Google maps works - you send the query, big machines chomp on the query and spit out a result, and your netbook doesn't have to go into overdrive trying to figure anything out. Basically anything that can take 100ms or so to complete could be moved off of the appliance and onto Microsoft servers. Why? Well, why not? Make some more room for rendering, I guess.