Google's Chromebooks, its cloud netbooks, the initial ones from Samsung and Acer, started moving out Wednesday.

They made Bloomberg's reviewer yearn for Windows. He said it's "like canceling your cable TV subscription and relying on the net for all of your video entertainment," a seductive idea but "more attractive in theory than in fact." And that opinion seems to be representative.

ReadWriteWeb, for instance, said, "The cloud replacing all your software isn't quite ‘there' yet" and wondered whether consumers understand they're "being sold a prototype OS."

CRN deemed the thing's role in the enterprise "questionable" because it "offers so little control over its file system, virus protection and hardware setting and that depends so much on a network connection."

By the way, it needed a Wi-Fi connection to activate and wouldn't connect to Bloomberg's Wi-Fi network, which has no trouble with Android. Poor guy had to pull out a spare wireless phone, call the carrier to activate its mobile-hotspot function and use it to connect. Then he was able to use the built-in Verizon service when he was in the office. Otherwise he didn't have a usable Wi-Fi signal.

See http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=anc7VJGIVmig for his other problems.