One of the problems I run into when recommending Chromebooks (I tried to convince my 75 year old mother, for example) is that almost every user turns out to have a need for something you can't do on a Chromebook. It ends up being a 90% solution for 90% of people, rather than a 100% solution for 80% of the people.
The thing is, most people are replacing a junky old Windows laptop that's just too slow/malware-ridden to use anymore, right? Keep that thing around, drag it out when you need that 5% app, and use the Chromebook the rest of the time.
I mean, if you buy a tablet, you don't worry that it can't print out Excel documents, right? It's still the best device for doing what you're doing with it. So with a Chromebook -- it's a better general-web-use device than a Windows laptop, particularly at the price points that Chromebooks live at.
I think most people want one device not two, and they want to improve their experience with everything, not just most things. While a Chromebook met 90% of my mother's needs, the 10% of functionality it lacked was 75% of her usage.
She works as an interpreter/translator and needs to be able to write documents in multiple language systems (e.g. non-Latin alphabets) in a way she understands.
The Google printer "solution" has always struck me as an exceedingly stupid solution. I have a local microcomputer, and a local printer yet the solution is to send my data to the other side of the world and then push it back on to the printer I am stood looking at? Why? It's stupid. Why not talk directly to the printer without the requirement of an Internet connection?
The same goes for sending files via Dropbox to someone next to you on an iDevice. Since it's very difficult for me to send data from my Android device to my wife's iPad or even from my MacBook to my wife's iPad3, the "solution" is to send it to the other side of the world on to Dropbox's servers for her to retrieve it.
Back in thte 50s when people had visions of an interconnected world and a utopian human future, filled with spaceflight and wonder, I am pretty sure they didn't have visions of needlessly sending data through 50+ network nodes just to get it back again on a device right next to them.
It's so stupid; if you had proposed this "solution" 20 years ago they'd have laughed you out of the room, yet today Chromebooks ("store all of YOUR data ELSEWHERE! Struggle to get it back! Find it impossible to send to a device NEXT TO YOU!") and the associated cloud solutions are all the rage.
Good point, but email is understood to indicate remote people, even if in truth your boss is sat next to you.
Printers don't really fit this model - when you tell something to print (for the printer on your desk), getting it sent to the other side of the world just to come back is daft, energy inefficient and wasteful.
