<p>Perhaps hoping to catch an updraft in the news cycle, Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced early Monday morning that it would field a Chromebook, Google's laptop alternative that has been trying to gain traction in the market for a long time.</p><p>The Chromebook fits Google's view of the world perfectly: it is entirely dependent on the cloud for full operation, but if you are ready to operate under the assumption that communications are fast, reliable, ubiquitous, and secure, you can benefit from having a fully fledged endpoint in any device at hand. With Google keeping track of your "state" at all times, you can access it from anywhere. For example, your bookmarks and browsing history come up on any Chrome browser you log into.</p><p>The problem with acceptance of Chromebooks in the past a number of companies have tried them, Google itself and more recently, Acer, and Samsung is that most people don't believe that their communications are quite so perfect as yet.</p><p>True, if you live behind a corporate firewall, have fast wired connections, and not a tremendous need for performance (network lags can be detrimental to data-hog applications like video editing, software development, and 3D modeling), then you can make do with a Chromebook-like endpoint.</p><p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2013/02/05/hp-endorsement-makes-google-chromebook-begin-to-look-legit/">Keep reading...</a></p>