Such as what Chrome OS is for netbooks. For example, the bios doesn't need a built in delay to change bios settings with the press of a key. POST itself will be much faster, no changing hardware means no need to scan for changing hardware connected to the motherboard, like new hardrives, DVD-ROMs, etc. I'm sure that shaves a few milliseconds off of the boot time, but that's strictly hardware, and all netbooks, if designed right, should share this trait.
As far as the OS itself, well, Chrome OS is simply stipped down Linux, Ubuntu distro at that, and someone already shaved down the boot time for Ubuntu to
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ubuntu-904-boots-in-175-seconds/">7.83 seconds, using a Solid State Drive. SSDs are great for this, because they don't have seek times to search for data like traditional hard drives, for example. Of course, they are more expensive at the moment, and have rather short lives compared to traditional hard drives.
Bear in mind that this is without the streamlining that can take place in a stripped down Linux distro, like Chrome OS. With fixed hardware, Chrome OS needs far less redundancy in drivers for legacy devices, different types of video cards/chips, or sound cards/chips. This alone can greatly speed up boot time.
This is all fine and dandy, indeed this is something you would expect from any OS that is designed to be used on a netbook. However, whatever advantages gained in increasing boot time or streamlining the OS is lost when damn near all applications you run are dependent on your Network speed and the reliability of your connection. Not to mention storage of your files onto a web server. What additional advantage is gained by, for example, in using Google's office apps online versus using Open Office offline? Yes, much less disk space is used, but in this case, its not hugely different, and if you were to use Google Gears(offline applications), then disk space is still used anyways.
Even on the lowliest spec'ed netbook, you would still see a huge difference in the performance of even offline office apps versus using an online one. Less overhead is used in the case of Google's webapps, however, they still have to pull what information they need from the Internet, which, to put it kindly, is slow as molasses versus pulling resources from a local computer hard drive, and even slower than that when pulled from a SSD.
Bear in mind that using a traditional application doesn't prevent you from storing any documents you create remotely, to be accessed anywhere you wish them to be accessed. There are multiple remote storage services out there, some free, some not, that you can use. In addition, you could even set your desktop to be a server for your documents so that not only can you access them anywhere, but they are stored locally(at home), and if you follow proper security guidelines, securely as well.
The one thing I don't understand is the argument that netbooks are, for some reason, much more limited than a traditional desktop, there's no reason for them to be. The biggest limitation they have is hard disk space and overall speed for the latest graphic intensive games. Hell, the latest netbooks have two to four times the memory of my old desktop in many cases, and also their CPUs match its speed, and yet it was able to run full fledged office applications, even the latest versions of such on Windows XP and Linux. As far as video, streaming or otherwise, and music, netbooks more than exceed the specs needed to be able to perform admirably for most people's needs. Hell, current desktops are, to be frank, overkill for most of these needs.
The biggest limiter, as I stated before, is hard disk space, and this gap will shrink over time. Desktop PCs are now in the Terabyte range, while Netbooks are in Gigabyte range. But frankly this isn't nearly as limiting as you think, particularly when coupled with the fact that its not impossible to remote most of your movies and music to a remote storage site of your choice, even on a Windows XP based netbook.
So the question is, what advantage does Chrome OS bring to the table that you cannot get from a more traditional Linux distro or even from Windows or MacOSX? Shaving a few seconds off of boot time doesn't seem to be worth it for more limited functionality that is, to be frank, arbitrary. Even if you were to argue that Chrome OS will perform better on a Netbook than more traditional distros or OSes, this doesn't mean that the ability to control where your data is stored needs to be taken away or what applications you prefer to use.
The interface, in addition, being based on a browser, leaves a lot to be desired, but the one thing I will say is that within probably a week of Chrome OS being released on netbooks, someone will come out with a way to use Chrome's window manager on any Linux system, and probably Windows and MacOSX soon after. Obviously some will like it, others, like me, won't, but that is the glory of open source after all. And, indeed, I expect that there will be competing Linux distros(already out in some cases) that provide all the speed and functionality of Chrome OS without any arbitrary restrictions in local storage or installing applications offline.
I'm not even arguing that Chrome OS will be a bad distro of Linux, indeed, its shaping up to be a decent one, for a small niche of users. The question I have is what problem is it a solution for?
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