The whole concept is doomed to be a niche market, regardless of that foolish comment. People need to remember one rule:

Games drive computers!

Starting probably with the 386, and continuing up until the second generation of Pentiums, every new processor was touted as being "only needed for high end servers and certain special tasks." That was pure crap, of course, because the early adopters were geeks, and the power was used for increasingly sophisticated games.

Windows 95 had to come out with special tools (WinG, which was supplanted by DirectX) because MS recognized that no OS would become fully established unless it supported sufficient graphical access to allow for the real time 3D games that were pouring onto the market. People simply wouldn't adopt Windows 95 if they couldn't play Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and other such games.

Eventually, the manufacturers began to get smart. The first indication of this that I saw was the Pentium MMX where a chip was released that included specific instructions to assist in graphics rendering. They sure weren't doing that for artists, either. The point was games and nothing less.

Now we see yet another attempt to sell a web-only portal. I seem to remember that somebody did that a few years back. There is a selection of people who just want to be able to surf the web and nothing else, but for the vast majority, if it won't play games, then it is a pretty limitted tool. Of course, there are increasing numbers of web games out there, and Linux isn't an absolute impediment to PC games, but if they don't have an easy way to install and play games, they will sputter along as a niche market until they run out of steam and fade into history...for a couple years, before yet another group attempts this "brilliant new concept". Heck, this could turn out like tablet PCs. Another brialliant idea that keeps popping up every two or three years as if nobody had ever heard of it before.