Here Come the Chromebooks, As Google and Intel Cozy-Up On Haswell 139
MojoKid writes "News from Intel (and Google) today includes an announcement that more Chromebooks are on their way to market packing Intel's Haswell processors. The new chips are designed to consume less power, thus preserving battery life for an all-day charge, while still offering better overall performance. Google notes that there are schools in over 20% of school districts across the country that now use Chromebooks, and with prices for some of the machines dipping as low as $199, deploying fleets of these machines in academia is an attractive option. What's interesting is the alignment between Intel and Google now, which should cause folks in Redmond to smart a bit, as yet another major competitor to the Windows operating system seems to clearly be coming into focus. Intel-Google partners including Acer, ASUS, HP, and Toshiba will be rolling out Chromebooks based on Haswell soon, and they'll collectively be sporting more variety of form factors."
Interesting (Score:1, Insightful)
11" display, SSD, running a cut-down Linux, intended primarily for use when connected to the Internet.
Hang on. Didn't we used to call these netbooks?
The Cloud Book (Score:2, Insightful)
NSA's best friend.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Could always just replace it with a full blown Linux distro. Problem solved.
Re:Windows competitor (Score:5, Insightful)
And if what most people need is a bicycle, and a Chromebook covers their needs it's a competitor. If people buy these instead of something from Microsoft, it is definitely a competitor.
It may not be as general purpose as Windows, but it might show people they don't really need Windows. And that should at least worry Microsoft.
Re:Interesting (Score:1, Insightful)
No shit, moron.
They do however cost about the same, and occupy about the same niche in the computer market -- for many people, they'll fill pretty much the same role since all they're doing is surfing the web anyway.
Re:What I like about Chromebooks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it's "Good Enough" performance for most people, and it gives you the ability to go over a full day in battery life with a fanless device.
My wife & mother in law both have Asus Transformer tablets and love them. They are fast, thin, and have great battery life. They love being able to use their android apps across devices.
My wife hates her work laptop as it's a boat anchor and she only gets about 3 hours of unplugged use out of it. ARMs performance is getting better, while Intel's power use is getting lower. It will be interesting to see where the graphs finally cross.