Cloudy Skies Ahead?

A year ago, I was somehow lucky enough to convince Google that I was a good candidate to test their prototype Chromebook, an all-web laptop:



Since then, the device has become my primary computing tool. In fact, I rarely use my old, slow, virus-prone, Windows XP desktop PC anymore. Since almost everything I do is on the web, from Google Docs for word processing and spreadsheets to mint.com for monitoring finances to Picasa for photo storing and sharing to listening to music on internet radio stations like Pandora. In addition to a heavy reliance on web-based applications, most of my files (documents, spreadsheets, images, mp3's) are stored in the cloud as well; meaning I have access to them at anytime from anywhere.

There is barely an application I use now that requires a Windows PC. The only reason I even still have it: geocaching. In fact, that's all I use it for. Since my Chromebook does not recognize my Garmin GPSmap 60CSx device, I cannot load waypoints on to it, nor extract GPS tracks from it. And until some genius creates an HTML 5 version of GSAK, I'll continue to be wedded to my XP behemoth. As I cannot live without my GSAK.

Cache On!