Just to respond to your arguments about the drawbacks of cloud computing:
A. From my own experience, this is rarely a problem - at least within countries that have a good Internet infrastructure. Most places you can get WiFi somewhere, and even in a country like the U.S., which is spread out, most areas have internet access. The ones that are far in few between (say, the mid-northwest of the U.S.) is the exact reason Google, Apple, and others are building their devices with 3G. Typically cell phone coverage is good enough for basic needs, and you can wait until you get back to a true connection (read: WiFi) for others (watching Netflix or something).
B. Oh, I wouldn't say that. I use most of Google's services, and it's absolutely free to me. Yeah, if I'm paying for a cell phone data plan, that costs me $30 a month, but I'm not paying for that plan JUST to use the cloud. I'm paying it for all the internet access I get (back to part A). So, it's not really comparing apples to apples. And, of course, "backing up things locally" is not good if you truly want to protect your data. Sure, it's great for doing quick transfers or something like that, but if something happens to your home (say, hurricane, flash flood, fire, etc), my guess is that both your PC and your external hard drive are going. Cloud back-up is redundant and off-site. That's definitely a plus.
C. This is a point I semi-agree with. For those of us here who are smarter than the average bear, or have a greater insight into computers, we probably have more secure systems (since we are probably only managing a few) and present a much smaller target than, say, Google. But too many people out there download SuperTrojan or CoolScreeSaver.exe and suddenly find themselves infected. In their case, Google can do a much better job than they can at protecting their syste.m
D. This is really the same argument as A, so...
right now, you'd be foolish to buy into this Chrome OS hype.
I disagree. I can think of a number of people who this would work really well for. And, while it is still new and it's a huge disruptive approach to The Way Things Are(tm), I think there is some real potential. Is it going to be perfect? No. Like they demonstrated with Android, Google likes to learn as they go. It sometimes is to their detriment - as it was with Google Wave. It was an amazing idea, but the implementation was poor at best and they did very little to market it and/or sell it correctly (which, coincidentally, I believe is also a problem of theirs with their efforts at a social networking platform). However, if they do this right, Google has the capability of really causing some major waves in how people think and use computers. I, for one, am interested in seeing what happens.