Those 1% of users will be the developers and the people writing how-to's and web apps. So take them out of the mix. It just seems problematic to me. I have one. It was too difficult to do anything more than check email and Facebook, so I installed Ubuntu. Want to edit a document in Dropbox? It is too complex for someone like my wife. If that is the intended audience, it will never gain traction and succeed.

One issue with the Chromebooks is that if you upgrade the memory or hard drive to a ssd, you void the warranty. I asked a Chrome tech to confirm this with a supervisor. You are not going to get much geek interest in a product if they can't upgrade a hard drive. So... It is going to languish with the low end users and not do much. My 2 cents

I am not a lawyer either, but even the Wikipedia article addresses the hard drive issue. "Warrantors cannot require that only branded parts be used with the product in order to retain the warranty.[7] This is commonly referred to as the "tie-in sales" provisions,[8] and is frequently mentioned in the context of third-party computer parts, such as memory and hard drives."

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/04/15/inside-the-james-bond-villain-data-center/ It seems like these folks have a lot going for them. There is the sensible management, a cool place to work, etc.

If I had mod points, I would mod the parent up. I have taught for 28 years and was Novell/Microsoft certified in the 90's. I have installed and administered various Linux servers over the years because they just worked and I could repurpose hardware easily on a budget.

I currently administer a Moodle server and due to politics, it is a MS server. For my money, we should be using Linux in the server room, and FOSS software on the desktop where possible. As the parent said, software lockin is huge, and culture is hard to change.