Betty,
  Sorry to hear you lost your house in the fire.  I hope you're able to get back to a rebuilt home soon.
Chromebooks are, indeed, cloud only.  That means that all of your apps, documents, settings, etc... are stored in and synchronized with, internet services (and only "cloud" apps are available).  Google Drive, for instance, is the primary storage mechanism for Chromebooks.
Most of them have a large storage upgrade (100G for 2 years) included in the purchase, so it's pretty reasonable to keep everything stored online (actually, I find the free-forever 25G allotment to be ample for my use).
This also means, however, that the devices aren't terribly useful without a network connection.  You can do some things (like write a new document, edit a cached document, write email, read previously cached emails, play a non-network-dependent game, etc...) offline, but most of the functionality of the devices relies on an internet connection.
That said, I find that very little of what I do (aside from work) is possible offline anyway, so the Chromebooks don't give up much by being cloud based, and they gain some very nice advantages.
One of the better advantages is that if the device is broken/stolen/lost then I only loose the hardware, my data is all sync'd to internet servers so I could buy (or borrow) another chromebook and everything is all there, ready to go.

If you do go with one or more Chromebook's as your day-to-day computer, then I would recommend you still have one desktop-type machine to be always-on at home so it can handle things like printer services (esp with CloudPrint), personal file storage, personal VPN services, software that isn't available as a web service, etc...
As long as you have the one (ideally small and low-power) desktop-type machine always on and running at your primary home, then having one or more Chromebooks for everything else (particularly secondary homes) can work out very well.
I have a Samsung chromebook and it works very well for portable computing and when I'm visiting relatives or traveling for work. The Chromebook is great at filling the gap between tablet/phone and desktop-replacement for portable computing.

Note also, that Chromebooks can be reimaged with Linux pretty easily, so you can get the Chromebook, and if it just isn't working for you, then you still have the option to put a standard Linux image on it.
Do note, however, that the Chromebook with the longest runtime (Samsung) is running an ARM processor, so if you might want to reimage with Linux you are probably better off with the Acer C7 or HP Pavilion 14 Chromebooks which have Intel Celeron processors, but don't last as long on battery.
The Celeron-based Chromebooks also (appear to) allow the SSD to be replaced with a standard laptop drive if you really want more local storage.

I hope that helps, and if it's feasible I'd be happy to let you borrow my Chromebook at a PLUG meeting (if I get to any this month or next...) for a couple hours to see if it works for you (all chromebooks have "guest" access).

BTW, when I say desktop-type, I don't really mean a normal desktop, below are some examples of what I mean from Zotac, which is a maker of very small and low-power desktop-type machines that I have found to work well (anything similar would too, these are just examples from a company I've had good experience with).
    http://www.zotacusa.com/zbox-nano-xs-ad13-plus.html
    http://www.zotacusa.com/zbox-ad06-plus.html
    http://www.zotacusa.com/zbox-giga-id72-plus.html
    http://www.zotacusa.com/zbox-nano-id62-plus.html
All of these are available with no O/S installed so you can install your Linux distro of choice without having to remove something else first.


On 07/07/2013 03:07 PM, Betty I wrote:
> Hi all;
> (I used to be the lady that was 'nice penguin @ webcanine dot com' but had
> to change my email so now I have this one.)
> We lost our house in Yarnell to the fire last weekend and are staying in
> Phoenix. But you guys have always been good for information on computer
> stuff in general, so i thought i'd ask here first.
> 
> We have good insurance, and it is going to cover replacement cost for our
> computers up there. They were old, pentium III's that i had put ubuntu on
> and were great desktops. but i am thinking that since we don't do a lot of
> computer intense work up there, just surf online and read emails, that
> maybe it would be better to just get laptops. Then i was thinking maybe of
> getting a chromebook instead of a 'regular' laptop; but my son said that
> those are all 'cloud ' based.
> 
> But does that mean that they have no functionality if we're not online?
> 
> What do you guys think?
> I have time, since it's going to take about 4 months to get a new
> manufactured home up there :(
> 
> also, OT, i did just finish an html class and made my final project a few
> webpages with photos of the place and the fire stuff. of course, we haven't
> been allowed back up there but we're hoping for early this week.
> 
> http://ipmarizona.com/eclass/before.html
> 
> well, thanks for any ideas.
> betty i
> 
> 
> 
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