I believe you can sign in as a guest, but it won't save your browser settings. Since ChromeOS is all about having data "in the cloud" and keeping as little mutable state on the computer as possible, I guess this makes sense.

Can we coin an abbreviation for "in the cloud"? I put it in quotation marks to avoid the unconscious eyerolling that I do when I use that phrase in a non-ironic fashion. "ITC"?

PLAYD - possibly loses all your data?

How's that one?

Google's data centers are slightly more reliable than the average laptop hard drive.

But are they as reliable and available as a laptop and a USB stick? That's a hard one to prove.

I assume they make back-ups all the time, so yes. Definitely more reliable for most people.

That's a pretty big assumption, for example:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/09/atlassian_cloud_stor...

But what if there's a bug where attackers gain access to your account and drain all of your Word documents into their bank accounts!!!11?

Larry Ellison was right, "The Cloud" as used in today's marketing is simply a synonym for "The Internet".

Yes, it is fundamental to it's function. Basically it acts as a terminal system to your google applications and the wider web.