Re: Oh yeah?
"If you heard that Boeing employees refused to commute in 747's, wouldn't you at least question what kind of priority they are for the company (if not outright questioning their safety)???"
No, I wouldn't. I might question their sanity if they preferred to commute in a 747 in the same way I'd question the sanity of the finish carpenter who chose to use a jack-hammer to install a mirror into a frame.
I don't think you're giving Google enough credit for the Chromebook. It would be fairly cheap for them to make unlocking the hardware trivial but they go to great lengths to make sure it stays only as capable as they choose. I'd love to pick up one and turn it into a Mintbook but it seems you have to be careful choosing which piece of hardware you get since the newer C7s with the 1007U haven't been broken open just yet.
Consider that if MS tried locking down hardware in the same way as Google has with the Chromebook, people would be howling at the top of their lungs. Make no mistake it's mostly a [meta?]data collection device and there's probably a pretty good chance that somewhere down the road we'll find out that some 'rogue' Google employee has 'accidentally' been collecting fairly disturbing data because they didn't remove some 'debugging' code somewhere along the line.
Besides, if Googlers had to eat their own dogfood, what makes you think they would share it with you?