I'm a teacher and most of my students use Chromebooks.  I wanted to try one so I knew how to help them when they couldn't figure out how to make it work.  However, I also have a pretty poor track record with small, portable machines... I drop them, or manage to drown them when the dog's water spills into my briefcase, or knock a cup of tea over into them.  So the "military grade, spill-resistant keyboard" part had some appeal.So far, I have to say it is holding up well, although I think the worst I've done is drop it off the arm of the couch onto carpet.  The sealed keyboard is great, and while it doesn't claim to be waterproof, it does seem like it will be a lot easier to clean than most notebook/laptop keyboards I've had, yet the key action is nice.  The keyboard is pretty small but I haven't had a lot of trouble adjusting to typing on it.  The one thing I miss is some tactile indication on one or two keys so I could find "home."This is a heavy little machine (maybe that's the military grade part of things).  It definitely had the shortest "out of box to operational" time of any computer I've ever set up.  I charged it and turned it on, it asked for the password to our wifi and then for my Google user ID and password and suggested I set a background screen and, boom, it was ready to work, with no bloatware to remove.  Chrome came up with all my bookmarks, Gmail grabbed my mail...  it was kind of amazing.  I use Google sheets, slides and docs quite a lot, so moving back and forth between them and the Microsoft Office apps I use for work and on my other devices shouldn't be an issue -- I haven't noted any problems so far.A couple of things to know about Chrome OS -- Clicking on the time in the lower left will bring up a small window where you can turn bluetooth on and off, manipulate the wifi connection and adjust volume.  It's really easy to miss the tiny "cog wheel" at the lower left of this small window and that gets you to the limited Settings for the machine.  Oddly, "Settings" from the Chrome browser also gets you to these settings!  Maybe it's not so odd, as many settings are about browsing preferences, but that's also where you find things like the time.  Although my machine was set up to take the time from the location, it never seemed to do so and I had to set it manually.On the lower left, where Windows users are used to finding the "home" button, there's just a small circle.  This brings up the Google search box but also a selection of apps, including a small "All Apps," and that's where you can find the things that aren't pinned to the taskbar.Google makes a big deal out of the fact that the Chromebook keeps itself updated automatically, and that is nice, but the OS gets in your face about so many things ("Hey!  Take it easy!  Removing your portable storage before ejecting it can result in a loss of data!"), it would be nice if it was a little more urgent about restarts that are needed to update things.The last big thing to think about with Chrome is that, while you can use the machine without being connected to the internet, you can't load any programs or access the files you've been blithely storing to Google's cloud storage.  Most people think of internet like oxygen these days, but this is not the machine you want to get stranded in a cabin far from connectivity with.Overall, I'm happy with this computer and am enjoying using it to play downloaded videos to the TV (HDMI port -- nice!) and I really appreciate that it also has two USB ports, so even with a USB mouse, I can still attach some portable storage.  There is also a microSD card slot, maybe because that is all that would fit.