Thanks for the update! My O/S reinstall went smoothly so I'm back in business with my four-year-old Ubuntu laptop for now. But when the hardware finally dies, I'll need to replace it with something much less expensive. If I could do 80% of what I want a computer for on a device costing less than $300, that would be amazing.

I was finding Google's own photo editing on G+ perfectly good for everything except artistic icon-making, but it suddenly stopped working in my version of Chrome--did it ever come back on your Chromebook?

Mostly, as I've gone from a high-powered Windows machine to Ubuntu + tablet + Android phone, the things I can no longer do (detailed photoshopping being the main example) just kind of dropped away. Maybe the same would happen with the switch to Chromebook.

I guess with Chromecast, the HDMI port is no longer necessary--or I'm betting that's the idea. Are you getting use out of your Chromecast?