I think the answer to both your questions is that the only way Google will succeed with ChromeOS is if they consider it a long-term play. The goal should be to

I think the answer to both your questions is that the only way Google will succeed with ChromeOS is if they consider it a long-term play. The goal should be to have the most refined cloud based system 5-10 years from now. When looking at your questions from that perspective I’d give you two answers… On Peripherals – Google is already addressing that problem with Cloud Print right now. The same concepts could easily be translated to other peripherals. Anyone whose tried to use it will tell you the concept is very rough right now but it has promise and several companies have agreed (in theory) to support it in their hardware with future versions. On Large Files – I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t think our current bandwidth is just a fraction of what will be available to us 10 years from now. For video editors who need to use raw files I don’t think Chrome is appropriate but Google’s said as much by targeting the OS at the netbook/low-end notebook market to start. Again the point is to refine the OS through iteration (as Google does with all their products) so when editing video in the cloud is a possibility they'll already have the most refined OS for it.