@(Unverified) One, boot times are dependent on the speed of the hard drive. Notebook hard drives, especially 1.8" drives, often run at 5400RPM. Booting from fast flash memory is obviously going to be an advantage, and the smaller the OS size, the faster the load times.

Two, if you put a second ARM CPU in a notebook that is dedicated to running Chrome OS, you can dramatically increase battery life over the use of an x86 CPU, depending on which one. If you imagine a gaming notebook with a large battery and a dual- or mixed-CPU, dual-OS set-up -- just as an extreme case -- a battery that would last a couple hours while using a high-end x86 CPU would last, using an ARM CPU, 8, 10, maybe 12 hours (I'm just guessing). Theoretically, for the added cost of less than $200 (i.e., less than the cost of a low-end ARM CPU netbook), one could have a gaming or desktop-replacement notebook with additional netbook functionality. Instead of getting a notebook and a netbook, you can get a notebook + netbook.

Finally, the speed of the boot-up has a lot to do with optimizing the actual use of the OS. Imagine that you have to look at an email attachment from work, like a file with 10,000 lines of text or an enormous photo, and then, depending on the end-point of that process, you might have to get on Photoshop, Mathematica or Power Point, download a large file from a server, etc. Google is suggesting that this kind of scenario, in their experience, is extremely common. The fastest way to achieve this task would be to boot up your instant-on OS with the fast, fully web-compatible, file-compatible browser, and then, only if you have to, boot up your main OS. That sequence makes sense only if the secondary OS is faster from start up and shutdown than the time it takes to boot up the main OS, establish a network connection, start the browser, and shut down the main OS. It makes even more sense if it's faster than the sequence when the main OS is in sleep or hibernate mode.

I think critics are missing the point that an instant-on, internet-only secondary OS that dramatically increases battery life by running on a "minimal" CPU is a feature that competes well with other features, like a large capacity SSD, a Blu-ray optical drive, an extended battery, or massive amounts of RAM. They're all ways of altering and improving the overall usefulness and versatility of a notebook that can cost a fair amount of money. A free, zero-maintenance OS with updates fully managed by Google, a few GB of flash memory, and an appropriately spec'ed ARM CPU wouldn't cost all that much for a notebook manufacturer.

I'm not saying that the only usage scenario in which one can imagine Chrome OS working is on a notebook with a dual, mixed CPU design. But it definitely to me seems like a winning idea. Someone else could do an instant-on OS better, and Google wouldn't care, since they make money each and every time someone uses the internet on any OS or any browser, apparently.

Regarding the Windows 7 startup time, with Chrome OS, Google is directly trying to address the "bloat" that accumulates through the life of an OS. The startup times for Windows 7 are presumably as fast as they're going to be right now.

Re: standby, it requires a small amount of power, a notebook can't be left unplugged on standby indefinitely, and it's vulnerable to power loss. Hibernate doesn't require power but takes longer than standby, depending on the speed of the main drive and the amount of RAM being used.

@Yoyodyne: True, although I have a feeling that WM will make a comeback. I don't think it's going to come from screwing around with the Today screen any more than it has been, though. But as the apps on iPhone and Android OS's see more control from above, WM and Symbian are now less regulated relatively speaking. WM has always had some of the best 3rd party software developers as well.

You can try Dark Room:
http://they.misled.us/dark-room

It's funny, because if a gadget like this comes out *without* a 3G modem, it gets criticized to some extent. But the reality is that the cost of cellular networking is prohibitive. That's probably why Nokia went with a phone for it's Internet Tablet line (the N900). People are already paying for broadband networking at home and increasingly for cellular data plans for phones. Unless there's a tax write-off or an employer paying for it, a cellular modem device is out of reach for the vast majority of people. If there were city-wide wifi, it would be a different story. But all those measures got sunk, for the most part.

Thanks, I remembered the capacitative screen on the Droid sometime after posting that comment. As a design decision, it's in line with the whole Internet Tablet series then.

Never has a simulated wood-grain table surface been so impressively presented.

It must be a European thing.

I think it has something to do with the urethra-like design element on the front of the helmet.

I think you're picking up on the Internet Tablet ancestry of the N900. We'll see how Nokia's design decisions work out in the marketplace, but this is basically the next iteration of the Internet Tablet series that has the advantage of being constantly networked by being a phone, but has the disadvantage of having a smaller screen than previous Internet Tablets in order to function as a phone.

As for the resistive touch input, I wonder if it's a hardware related issue. Has any 800x480 screen on a phone shipped with capacitative input yet?

Finally, a dedicated device that will make my headtime more efficient.

"A few months ago, I discussed the viability of multiple mobile OS platforms and how it's not likely that they all will survive long term, and one big reason Apple's platform looks better and better is entertainment apps."

I'm sorry, but this is one of the least sophisticated analyses of technology that I've ever read. It's a foolish argument that states that the survival of phone OS's is completely tied to the availability of entertainment apps, and that then tries to establish this argument on the basis of a vague statement about "our research" and then follows it up with a personal litany about owning 100 apps.

People like entertainment. They will play games on any device they own, even more so if the games are free or cost 99 cents. But the most entertainment to be had is the internet, and every smartphone OS is working on making the internet more accessible on phones.

Furthermore, the fact that the author is too lazy to sort through his music collection, listens to individual songs more than whole albums, and thinks that drag-and-drop is somehow more cumbersome than iTunes bespeaks to his poor judgment and his pedestrian relationship with music. The further stipulation that it's easy to get video onto the iPhone is simply ridiculous.

The article would have been much shorter and more honest if the author had just written, "I love the iPhone! I love gadgets! I love entertainment! I own 100 apps! It rocks!"