[ale] Why does Chrome Netbooks look like Macs?

[Mike Harrison]

On Mon, 13 Dec 2010, Chris Fowler wrote:

> On Mon, 2010-12-13 at 16:33 -0500, Mike Harrison wrote:
>> Scrooge was in my pocket....
>
> Scrooge McDuck?

He's my hero. ;)

He looked around at the 4 laptops I currently own,
(not counting my wife's two) plus other devices
(chumby.. N900, Zaurus.. etc..) and balked at
a sexy $1700 toy that I don't need.

What I really want to know is, how useful is a "chrome netbook"
with a slow or no internet connection? I'm in a -very- nice
hotel in Charlotte, with a bursty 'net connection. Would I be cussing?
Can I install Firefox (Chrome is broken on some sites I need)?
Can I buy one and install a real OS: Straight Linux?
The Chrome sales video show a guy doing a simple image crop online,
can I run Gimp or Inkscape and do real image work on the system?

I walked around the Tiger Direct on I-85 on the way up here from Atlanta,
and enjoyed looking at some nice laptops and netbooks. Sony makes good 
looking gear, but some of the various brand current generation laptops 
look like they were "customized" by the auto-parts department at K-Mart,
or the set designers from "Fast and Furious". Glad to see Google made a 
nice looking netbook, it might bring the laptop/netbook world back around 
to nice clean functional design.