So Google has turned up the hype train this week by announcing their Chrome operating system (not available for another year).  News-land has gone into overdrive about it.

What's the big deal?  It's not like this is anything new or unexpected, it's just Linux with their Chrome browser running on it.  How exactly is this going to be a game changer than any of the other hundred distros out there?  Many of which are also lightweight and stripped of applications.

"We are completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates."

Oh right your sand-boxing the browser and preventing anything else running on top of the browser other than drivers and Chrome?  Great, let's hope I don't ever want to use some C, or C++, you know actual proper applications.  HTML, CSS and Javascript isn't there yet guys.  Good luck writing Crysis or Supreme Commander in Javascript.

The browser isn't always, nor will it always provide the best user experience.  I'm composing this message in a Windows application, why?  Because it runs far better than any browser hitting my blog.  Not that I'm saying we're not doing more things in the browser, of course we are, heck even I've moved off NNTP lately and using web forums more, but it'll be years before the web can harness the colossal amounts of computing power we've got on our local machines.  Until it can do that lightweight Linux distros and Chrome OS, will just be low-end computers.  Power users will always demand, well power.