[thirdsight]

a) Offline mode is unreliable. I know because I trialled it on a borrowed C720 last week. It's barely usable. Not only that you can't easily shift a document onto an SD for example in offline mode. Try it, then poke it in a PC and see what happens.

b) school doesn't have a public WiFi network and all the ethernet ports are MAC address locked to the workstations plugged in for security reasons. This is the correct way to do it.

c) We have ADSL here in the UK as the primary connection. When it goes bang, usually several exchanges are out. This happens surprisingly frequently. Friends will be down too, as will other free internet options. Your only option is to drive or get a bus 5+ miles away which just sucks.

Sorry but your solutions are bad as is the product.

[VLM]

The problem with bringing up local issues for a global product is all the people who live in local areas without those issues.

I'd be extremely hard pressed to lose wifi connectivity. I've been carrying around a republic wireless phone which offloads calls over voip for a couple years (got in on the beta) and I have excellent connectivity at home, work, library, kids school, every coffee shop I've ever entered, one fast food joint and two family dining restaurants within 2 miles of home, and believe it or not, our local grocery store. Oh and auntie's house, and about 20 of my kids friends houses all of which seem to have wifi either DSL, fiber, cablemodem, or who knows what (satellite?). My kids pediatricians office has a guest wifi, it helps the waiting room time a little.

I'd have to think for a second, other than in my car while driving, where I don't have wifi. The movie theater (probably just as well). The local fast food sub sandwich store. The Home Depot store. The local walgreens drug store. Um... that's all I can think of? There must be more. City hall, where I spend 5 minutes annually paying my property tax, OMG thats the end of the world having no wifi there.

If I was really hard pressed, I'd buy one of those wifi hotspot gadgets on a pay as you go and use that. They're cheap.

When it gets to the level of the ridiculous, like whatsoever shall I do after the solar flare wipes out all internet and the zombie apocalypse begins and I really want to see that kitten video on youtube, well, I'll have better things to do than watch youtube videos, so I'm STILL not worried.

[DanBC]

You've described a few small cities plus New York.

London has that kind of connectivity if you're prepared to pay - at which point the cost savings of chromebook start to fail. Especially with the increased uk cost of the device.

[VLM]

"You've described a few small cities plus New York."

LOL no, typical neighborhood in the 2nd richest suburb of a boring former top 30 midwestern urban center about 20 miles from "downtown", nearby a really freaking huge freshwater lake. Everything around me was built around 1960, the modern exurbs and mcmansions are all 5 to 10 miles further out so I guess you'd call this an inner-ring suburb. My commute length is about in the middle of my coworkers commute lengths. This is Extremely stereotypical suburbia at least in the midwest USA. 100K people, basically no real crime, the crime blotter is all "drunk idiot did this" and "drunk idiot got into fight" type stuff. One rare bright spot is our local HS always makes it thru regionals and into state at the Academic Decathlon, always every year no exceptions, and when I was on the team we made 4th at state, but once in awhile the local H.S. places pretty high at nationals, I guess the year I was on the team I must have dragged them down (LOL). They're not going to be filming a reunion episode of Friends or any other trendy urban stuff here any time soon, we don't have a Tesla dealership or anything like that. There is an Apple store but its 10 miles away. We only got a frozen yogurt store last summer, we didn't even have cupcake stores until after they already peaked on the coasts, its just not that trendy of an area. So a very nice area, but hardly the urban paradise SV is supposed to be, or all of CA is supposed to be, or pretty much anywhere on the coasts. We're referred to as flyover country, made fun of a lot. The nearest smart car dealership is 30 miles away but I don't know if they're even still cool. The closest IKEA is like 100 miles away, no kidding. We have a symphony orchestra that no one attends (well, far under 1% of population) so unsure if thats culturally good or bad. And no, our symphony does not play dueling banjos or whatever just because we're well over 1000 miles from any ocean coast. Nor do all our summer vacations look like "Deliverance" movie although sometimes it gets kinda iffy. TLDR is on average its a pretty typical boring suburb, some things a little better, some a little worse.

I'm more a tea drinker than coffee, but I've been given the impression for about a decade its illegal or something to sell coffee without free wifi.

Oh and I forgot the local McDonalds about 1.5 miles away has free wifi, I don't eat that kind of "food", but if I needed wifi I'd do what I have to do to get it, including eating a big mac or whatever.

[DanBC]

The product isn't bad. It's just not ready for anywhere without very very good connectivity.

Sadly lots of companies focus on "fast" internet, and very few focus on low speed but very reliable internet.

I have lousy internet but i could get a lot of use from a chromebook.