How does $20 per month sound?
That's the deal reportedly about to be announced by Google any moment now.
For your $20, you'll get a Chrome laptop - a cousin of the experimental CR-48 notebooks the company was handing out a few months ago (see Doug's review of one here).
It will be a cheap laptop, very close to disposable. It will run Chrome, and not a lot else. This is a laptop for the Facebook generation, aimed at people who are rarely out of range of a wifi signal, and happy to trust Google with all their data. Forever.
Data storage and webapps are included too. Your email, your photo storage, and thanks to yesterday's Google Music announcement, your audio storage will all be included too.
Since the laptop is effectively leased, rather than owned, you'll probably be able to trade it in for a new model every now and then.
There'll be no software updates to worry about, no data to move from machine to machine. Since it's all online anyway, it will just be a case of logging out on the old machine, and logging in on the new one.
Sounds too good to be true? Google has deep pockets, so it certainly has the money to set this up. And if it could entice enough people to start paying their monthly fee - well, that's a very nice income generator for years to come. The cell phone companies have already discovered that.
The only remaining question is the trickiest one: trust. Do you trust Google to look after all your stuff, securely and safely? Does $20 per month sound like a good deal to you?
(Via Forbes)