A higher-end processor also helps decode 1080p or higher-resolution video, or run Native Client apps and games, or just render browser content at 2560x1700.
> Wasn't the point of "fully living in the cloud" that you wouldn't need a powerful client?
No, the point was that you could seamlessly move between different clients in the event of hardware failure, being away from your primary device unavoidably, etc.
> Wasn't "thin client" the dream?
"Thin client" may have been someone's dream, but it certainly hasn't been Google's rich clould-based apps vision.
> No, the point was that you could seamlessly move between different clients
One word. Dropbox.
I work on three computers every day. Documents, Preferences etc all sync immediately. And how does living in the cloud help me when there is network failure ?
>> No, the point was that you could seamlessly move between different clients
>One word. Dropbox.
Yes, Dropbox is an example of using the cloud to make it easy to move between client machines.
> I work on three computers every day. Documents, Preferences etc all sync immediately. And how does living in the cloud help me when there is network failure ?
Using Dropbox to provide immediate sync of document and preferences is living in the cloud.
And "living in the cloud" works fine in network failure, if you have a mechanism to operate offline when the network is unavailable and resync when the network is available -- whether that's because you use a desktop OS and local apps with synchronized cloud storage or webapps with offline functionality, the latter of which is a feature Google pushed very hard for years on.
Then again, I guess that's why the emphasis here is on portability and screen quality... so that makes sense.
Then again #2, you need a powerful client these days to run all of the Javascript being used... so the i5 CPU makes sense.
Okay, this is moderately interesting.