Cr-48 as my only computer?

As my only computer?
I’m getting ready to go back to work after a little over a week off for the holidays. Being the geek that I am, I haven’t been a day away from the computer. I thought I’d take a minute and throw out some thoughts on my computing away from work.
First, it is pretty clear that for me, this platform will not be my only computing device. I am a programmer professionally, but it turns out that I also like to do a little coding for fun...damn, I used to be so cool...when did I become a geek? Anyway, coding for me, on this, simply isn’t possible. Next, I had to do a little ripping and burning and converting of old cassettes of some of my dad’s old bands. This, I don’t do often, but it’s also something that simply is not possible. I need an analog in to get the sound, a converter to convert the wav to mp3 or flac or what ever format I’m using, and then I need to copy the ripped files to an ipod. None of that can be done on this platform. I also had to make CD copies of those same tapes, and of course that’s not possible either.
The fact of the matter, however, is that these activities were in the minority of my computing. Most of what I did was a little video watching, hulu, netflix, that sort of thing; a little music listening while cooking, done by way of Audiogalaxy, cooking using recipes that I have stored in evernote, facebook, twitter, and a little of this document writing. All of these things worked without a hitch, and of course they did. All of these activities are web/browser based.
Hulu/netflix, I’ll be frank. I did these just to see how well it would work. I was a bit disappointed. The cr-48 just does not have the hardware power to do video in full screen. It’s ok if I drop the bit rate to the lowest possible, but if you have any of the other many devices for web based video viewing, use those for your movies.
Music through AudioGalaxy (www.AudioGalaxy.com) - This is just awesome. Go to their website for details on what they are, but for listening, point your browser to their web site, log in to get your collection, and you have reasonable quality streaming music. Over the built in speakers, it’s not bad sound quality, it doesn’t skip, you have music. It rocks. Of course, this won’t replace your stereo system, but my good system is in the basement, nowhere near my computer, and with the open layout of my house, cranking up another stereo while my daughter is watching a DVD just isn’t a good option.
Cooking - No, the Cr-48 will not make you a better cook. If you suck, you suck, but what it does nicely, is give you access to Evernote (www.Evernote.com). And for now, Evernote is where I keep most of my recipes. Is this unique to a Cr-48, no, but it is just one more thing that makes this device a very attractive option for those who do not need to be able to create “speciality” content. Plus, it has great battery life, so you don’t need to keep the charger near by.
Of course we also have facebook and twitter, web based, works well, and google docs for creating content.
All of this is very boring stuff, and it’s stuff that fits what most people do with their computers. The most interesting thing that hit me over the holidays was the concept of what this device really is. My wife and I spent several hours with my brother-in-law who managed to get himself in to a rather nasty spot with his netbook. Lack of computer knowledge mixed with a little paranoid web page clicking that enabled him to install a couple of rather nasty viruses, coupled with the irrational fear that trying to install my recommended virus protection would somehow delete all his files made for a very long afternoon. This computer is perfect for him. He has the ability to do literally everything he could possibly want with a computer, with no maintenance needs and no ability to allow some scareware page to get him to install malware on his own computer. I also took the opportunity to talk up the chrome OS to some of the other older family members that I came across. From conversations, the Cr-48 filled their needs as well. Email, document writing, facebook, none of those conversations brought up anything that could not be accomplished through the web.
The last cool little thing that I came across was the login to the Cr-48. Just like the standard android world, you log in to the device by supplying google account credentials. This logs you in, and gives you access to your stuff. I also have a free google apps account. With the google apps updates, you can also use an apps account login to log in to the Cr48. So, I have my personal messing around stuff, and I have my apps account profile. I have not been able to log in with my work credentials yet (they’ve recently migrated to google apps), but I expect that to be coming soon, and I’m looking forward to that. I should be able to log in with my work credentials, giving me access to a work profile on a computer that is much more portable than my dev box. No, I can’t code on this, but the sad reality is that my job consists of quite a bit of crap in addition to sitting at my favorite IDE and developing.