I agree with you, ChromeOS certainly doesn't look bad. I just have a hard time figuring out - what's the difference between the two? What use case does ChromeOS solve that Android doesn't solve?
I consider myself web-savvy and fairly technical. If I have trouble answering this question, what is the average user going to think?
People are turning towards experiences - which is a combination of hardware and software. What edge does ChromeOS have that is going to give it a better experience than Android?
> What use case does ChromeOS solve that Android doesn't solve?
Printing. Browsing the web and writing long emails like a normal user, rather than like a tablet user: no weird issues with mouseover, fully-functional built-in Flash, etc, etc. There are lots of differences between the web experience offered by Android and the web experience offered by Chrome OS.
Also, normal people won't have to make a decision in a store about picking "Android" vs "Chrome OS". It's more and more likely that people will pick from the limited few options in the store, and maybe try it out before buying it. If a store sells laptops and some run Windows, some Mac OS X and some Chrome OS, then Chrome OS will be a serious competitor at least in the netbook form-factor.
Tablets are often sold in different parts of a store, or at least together in a different display. You'll see people picking between iPads and Andriod tablets. I doubt that normal stores would display Chrome OS tablets in the same area (but I could be wrong).
> "What use case does ChromeOS solve that Android doesn't solve?"
Android is designed for native application based devices, Chrome is designed from the ground up for Web applications. Web applications especially with HTML5 caching technologies, LTE and Wimax, use of whitespace to increase Wifi range is the future and make a lot more sense on tablets than mobile phones.
Also why not try Chrome OS first before you say it is dead: http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/
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