Well, it is getting 'late' here, so I must keep this short, but to see pictures of what the CR-48 laptop looks like, I would highly recommend the below reviews I found. They also go into more depth of all the features and everything. But I will leave you with some quick first impressions.
It has occurred to me that this computer is *perfect* for people like Emily. It basically strips out all the unnecessary cruft of the OS that has been accumulating for decades, and puts you right onto the internet as quick as possible. The simplicity of this experience is very refreshing, and it takes some getting used to, but after browsing the Chrome App Store for a bit, and playing some games with Emily there, I realized how ready we are for this transition-to-the-cloud to occur.
The hardware is really great (you'll read opposite opinions elsewhere), and it really is the perfect 12" form factor that is slim and light enough to carry around with you, but big enough that you don't feel cramped while typing or browsing. The sleep-wake behavior is beautiful, it sleeps and wakes so effortlessly that you wonder why this has never been perfected before (except on a few Macbooks that I've seen people around me use).
It is a little slow, but because the browser is basically running on the metal, you don't really notice it except on occasion. Although I have not tried youtube, the html5 video player on vimeo seemed to work just fine for me.
One really promising feature is when you alt+tab to different browser windows, the effect is obviously hardware accelerated and liquid smooth, which makes me pine for the days when Chrome gets hardware accelerated rendering (as then all scrolling should theoretically be that smooth).
So Emily and I are going to share the cr48 (although we need to come up with a cuter name for it), as I think it is an even better fit for her than it is for me (I've found that you can Ctrl+Alt+T to open a limited shell that I can ssh from, but that's kinda besides the point of a notebook like this).
I'm excited to try the battery life out some, and see how the free 3G performance is from Verizon.
Here's those reviews:
Our New ChromeOS Notebook - First Impressions
2010-12-17 - Reading time: 3 minutes