As a bit of an experiment I have brought myself a Chromebook. Specifically the ARM based Samsung built 303C. This cost £229 from PC World which is very cheap for something that looks a bit like a Macbook Air 🙂
Obviously the Chromebook is a cloud based device and not a full laptop but as long as it is in WiFi range it does a good job of providing most of the facilities that I use on a daily basis. One thing that is missing is software development tools but this can be somewhat overcome by using a cloud based IDE such as Cloud9.
I have not yet experimented with what is possible with the Chromebook fully off line or with how usable it will be “out and about” with a MiFi. I intend to try out both of these scenarios in the coming weeks.