Christmas comes a few days early

When I returned to my home the other day I noticed a package sitting by the front door. Being the merchandising season, this wasn't too surprising.  It's also my birthday this week, so anything can happen.

When I brought it inside and opened it, I found a Chrome notebook.  Well happy birthday to me!  And none too soon; with the holidays upon us the whole family's been going a bit nuts, and I've been leading the trend.  A new piece of tech to obsess on a bit would be perfect to direct some of my crazy away from the wife and kids, and put it back up in my office where it belongs.

After unpacking and charging, I took it for a spin and found the besides the Chrome software, the device has been set up to look not only for WiFi but also for Verizon 3G network points.  Better still, the Verizon setup has a plan offering a hundred megabytes of data a month, prepaid, for twenty-four months.  To be sure, a hundred megs isn't much in terms of phone carrier service - a couple hours of video - but for my purposes that's just fine. Even better, when the data is expended for the month, the service is shut off until the first of the following month. I don't have to worry about someone grabbing the thing and playing Farmville all the way down to NYC in the back of the car.  Sweet.

Well, this post never made it to press last year - I wrote it in December of 2011 (or was it 2010?) shortly after "Mario" showed up.  It has been a great ride - although recently, Mario's hardware WIFI connection became cranky and one must not tilt the display after starting it for fear of disconnects.

Small potatoes, I say.  Besides solidifying a huge base of users, the experiment has unfolded as we see today, with numerous different companies selling Chromebooks as well as the rollout of related items like Google Play.  It's raised the stakes for tab-laptop developers, while making online stores more than a place to purchase books and music.  The question of the month is, What will Santa Google bring, this year?

Regardless: happy happy, folks.