Cloud Computing: HP Tries a Chromebook
February 8, 2013
Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Maureen O’Gara.
PCs being what they are nowadays HP went into the Chromebook business Monday. Demand for the kind of ho-hum computing the thing exemplifies is apparently expanding. Acer says that its $199 C7 Chromebook now accounts for 5%-10% of its US shipments. Samsung, which leads in the space, has a $249 ARM-based Chromebook and a more fully featured $449 version. Lenovo will be coming out with a $429 ThinkPad X131e Chromebook later this month.
The $330-to-start HP widget is called the Pavilion 14 Chromebook. The 14 comes from its 14-inch 1,366-by-768-pixel screen, the largest on the market so far. The 4lb dingus is built on a dual-core 1.1GHz Intel Celeron chip, 16GB of flash storage, 2GB of RAM, expandable to 4GB, with Wi-Fi, Ethernet, a 720p camera, three USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port and an SD card slot. HP says the battery is only good for four hours and 15 minutes. Samsung and Lenovo are supposed to do six hours. It ships with 100GB of free Google Drive cloud storage for two years, otherwise priced at $120.