The hardware is so good in this case, I think it's far more useful to install ubuntu or windows 8 on this computer instead.
I'm not surprised that video playback is slow since native access to file is probably not perfected in the website environment that Chrome OS probably uses.
The most common problem I see is technical outsourcing, there are a lot of MBA based teams who cannot convince a great technical person to join.
As a result, outsourcing to get the product done becomes a necessity and also easier than going around to find a good technical cofounder. It is also tempting since outsourcing seems cheaper and promises to get the product built.
The product just ends up not being good enough.
As a technical person in the startup industry, this is the #1 reason why I think startups fails.
The biggest problem in these hackathons is that it's more about the pitching than the product.
At this particular one, they even told us, worry about the UI and the pitch, don't worry about the backend.
I've been to 5 hackthons total, including 2 Techcrunch disrupts, 2 angelhacks, 1 startup weekends. What I realize is that the winners aren't the best hacks, they are the best pitches, some people only demo their hacks for 2-3 seconds and it's questionable that it even works.
If the business person pitches well, and you have a good designer, you probably win.
wow, some of those copies were just blantant. Is there a way to embed a specific string in the website (either through html or css) so later you can somehow google search anyone is copying you?