More:

The device, which exists as a prototype and will eventually be sold as a branded item to consumers, is the company’s most significant venture into hardware. While the initial purpose of the device will be for streaming music, the eventual use could be much wider.

Matt Rosoff writes:

Google has never shown that it has any of the characteristics necessary to build, market, and sell consumer goods.

"My desktop isn't the only computer I plan to replace in the next few months. I need a new laptop too, and my goal is simple: to find a 13" MacBook Air that isn't made by Apple.<br />
"It turns out that I'm not the only one wanting this mythical non-Apple MacBook Air. Intel wants them too—it calls them Ultrabooks. The chip company has been kicking the Ultrabook idea around for a few months now, and it has grand ambitions: by the end of next year, it wants 40% of PC laptops to be Ultrabooks."<br />
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To which end it has a $300m fund to "invest in companies that are working to build that kind of hardware - ultrathing, rapid boot, metal case, long battery life, long standby time.<br />
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But as the article shows (and other analysts agree) that's not so easy. A really good examination of why the PC OEM business can do some things really well, but others far less well.

Eben Upton: "I used to teach at the University of Cambridge and was part of the process of interviewing sixth formers for Computer Science, and that's where I noticed the need to do something.<br />
"When I was there as a student in the mid-1990s, the typical skillset that undergraduates came through the door with would be assembly language, maybe a bit of C, BASIC and a certain amount of hardware hacking.<br />
"By the time I was actually interviewing, ten years later, that had changed to mostly HTML from people who had done a web page and the really good ones would maybe have done PHP – you'd get the occasional exception, but the skills have declined.<br />
"It was as if there was a pipeline of hobbyists and then one day we stopped topping the pipeline up with ten year olds and gradually this wave has passed through the pipeline, first through the universities and then the workplace."

First, be scared: Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky, early SSD adopters, have seen them going down like ninepins. Average life: 12 months.<br />
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So are they swearing off them? Not on your life.<br />
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"Solid state hard drives are so freaking amazing performance wise, and the experience you will have with them is so transformative, that I don't even care if they fail every 12 months on average! I can't imagine using a computer without a SSD any more; it'd be like going back to dial-up internet or 13" CRTs or single button mice. Over my dead body, man!"<br />
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Just have a good rotating backup.