6. Have All Your Hardware Work Seamlessly

Up to now, Google’s hasn’t had to stress too much about system-level headaches such as hardware compatibility, and while I expect a lot of device drivers will be supplied by Chrome's Linux undercarriage, it’s hard to imagine exactly how your iPhone, digital camera, printer, scanner, writing tablet, Bluetooth devices (you get the idea) will all tie seamlessly into a browser-based system. An iPhone or iPod might get mounted as a drive, but how will it sync and what will it be syncing to? A digital camera might call up Picasa in the browser, but what if I use Flickr instead? What are the chances my two-year-old wireless Lexmark printer will function? What happens when I try to play a DVD? Google insists it’s working hard on the issue of device drivers, but take it from Microsoft: It’s a horror show.