Acer Officially Announces C720 Chromebook 115
adeelarshad82 writes "Acer officially announced its new Chromebook, C720. The C720 is 30% thinner (at 0.75 inches thick) and lighter (at 2.76 pounds) than Acer's previous Chromebook, C7. The C720 Chromebook has an 11.6-inch anti-glare widescreen, with a 1,366-by-768 resolution. Acer claims seven second boot times and up to 8.5 hours of battery life. The C720 comes with 4GB of DDR3L memory and uses an Intel Celeron 2955U processor based on Haswell technology. The system also has 16GB of local SSD storage along with 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi to get to Google's cloud-based storage. Like previous Chromebooks, the C720 Chromebook is constantly updated with the latest version of the Chrome OS and built around the Chrome browser." One thing this machine lacks is the most intriguing feature of the new ARM-based (and lower-power) Chromebook 11 from HP: charging via Micro-USB.
Crappy screens (Score:3, Insightful)
Keep me from upgrading my current ancient netbook.
Get with the program guys!
Re:Crappy screens (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. I lost interest at 1366 followed by 768.
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First is Cost per pixel per square inch. Second is the greater power requirements of greater pixel densities, other things being equal.
Netbooks aren't profitable (Score:2)
What's sad is that my netbook originally came with a 1024x600 screen. I got an aftermarket screen for it, but the best I could upgrade to was 1366x768... I don't understand why laptops/netbooks have such low res and dpi
There was no market for a high-end netbook, that's why (well, other than the small MB Air). That's a market that Microsoft wanted to create/crack for years - from their original "tablet PC" to "UMPC" to the more Intel-driven "Ultrabooks", the entire market has been a failure (some say, by design to preserve profit margins for the WinTel brothers).
Then the iPad came out and was the death knell (cheap Android tablets being the nails in the coffin to keep the analogy going). Why would a manufacturer create a
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1920x1080 would be fine, as well as a number of higher numbers.
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800x600 is perfectly "adequate".
but he probably plans on looking pictures on web pages so that they don't look like crappier than on his ipad.
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>May I ask what exactly you plan to do with a Chromebook that requires > 1366x768?
Programming.
It doesn't 'require' it, but the experience is certainly nicer with higher resolution.
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Funny thing is, when i saw this my first thought was "C720? Why would you pick a model designation that invokes numbers associated with crappy video resolutions?
Then I saw it..... "...by-768 resolution" rotfl so that is why they have no worries. Let me know when the C1200 comes out.
Units (Score:5, Informative)
0.75 inches = 19 mm
2.76 punds = 1.25 kg
Re:Units (Score:4, Funny)
want more pixels, ffs! (Score:5, Insightful)
It has been told many times already. 768 dots may be OK for a phone. For a laptop, anything less than a 1000 is just sad news.
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There were no spelling mistakes in the previous post.
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Meh. The resolution is on-par with my EeePC... For a CHEAP laptop, I'm reasonably happy with that resolution, and can wrangle my software into working pretty well with it.
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I have a 1366x768 12.5" notebook and I do significant software development on it. The trick is that I use Ubuntu Unity where it puts the icons on the left side and then it hides the application menus in the top bar. Then I remove all of the toolbars in gedit so that there is only the top Unity bar and then the tab bar and the rest is text entry. It really is enough for me to look at and I don't like to have more than ten open files at once anyways. I've owned a Macbook Pro before with 1440x900 and I can
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I can remember when (and your are begging for this) computer resellers went around making claims to business that they would need nothing beyond amber text based 14 inch screens as they were capable of reproducing all the information a business needed. With regard to this product it is all about cost efficiency, how much bang for how much buck. At $250.00 it seems pretty impressive and a worthwhile contender for reasonable loss with death by misadventure, as long as the SSD is readily removable and can be
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It has been told many times already. 768 dots may be OK for a phone. For a laptop, anything less than a 1000 is just sad news.
Actually the High Definition 16x9 aspect ratio standards are 720p (1280×720 pixels), 1080p ( 1920×1080 pixels) and the new 4k or 2160p (3840 × 2160 pixels).
:)
Because the screen size of a laptop is normally small a 1280x720 pixels or better display is normally quite adequate and cost effective for most people. Of course you can get better resolutions but they normally cost more.
We don't like talking about the 1080i standard since it mainly sits in a corner and drools a lot.
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Yeah that seems to be how we got into this mess. Managers thought that laptops were just tiny televisions
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On ChromeOS? Can you even use multiple windows at once on that? If not, 1366x768 is just fine for a single maximized browser window...
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Warning: Ad pop-ups on mouse-over (Score:5, Informative)
The page linked to has annoying ad pop-ups that show when you hover the mouse pointer over keywords. The summary above is practically all the info in the article, so there is no reason to go there.
And by the way... How did this article get up-voted enough to get to the first page? There is nothing particularly interesting about yet another Chromebook with incremental updates over its predecessor ... or is there?
Pretty darn useful little machines (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently replaced my MacBook Air with a Acer Chromebook refurb I picked up for $150 on ebay. It is an awesome portable dev machine. Good battery life, and Crouton is incredible. You can run Linux and ChromeOS simultaneously (via a chroot); it makes switching between the a matter of two keystrokes. I never thought I'd actually like ChromeOS, but it's actually pretty slick.
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Chromebook is a waste (Score:4, Insightful)
Why bother making Chromebooks, the market doesn't much seem to care for them. Instead they should be putting Android onto laptops since the market is already very familiar with Android and the marketplace is already well stocked with apps.
The transition from a phone or tablet that runs Android to a laptop that runs Android would be quite minimal. You would be able to continue using very cheap hardware and people wouldn't have to worry about adopting an entire additional OS in their lives. Office applications exist for Android as well as many common applications for any number of purposes.
Google's support for Chrome is puzzling when Android is incredibly entrenched in the market and public conscious. It would also allow Google to concentrate the resource on one Operating System instead of two. When you consider that people are already being forced to learn a new interface with Microsoft's Metro stunt, now is the time to step up to the plate and make Android that interface.
Re:Chromebook is a waste (Score:5, Informative)
I see Chromebooks as:
1) For those who want to serf the web casually but prefer mouse and keyboard over touchscreen interfaces.
2) A proper netbook, as it was supposed to be. The first netbooks were quite similar to the Chromebook concept, a legacy-free system with a small (often Linux-based) OS that wasn't too taxing on the machine. Then Windows hijacked the "netbook" concept and made them into underpowered Windows PCs instead.
That said, I really don't see any reason why we shouldn't be able to also run touch-oriented Android apps on the ChromeOS desktop.
Google, go show Microsoft how it should be done!
Re:Chromebook is a waste (Score:5, Funny)
I see Chromebooks as:
1) For those who want to serf the web
Your page is ready m'lord.
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Then Windows hijacked the "netbook" concept and made them into underpowered Windows PCs instead
You don't think it was the OEM's installing Windows on the machines due to customer demand, is what hijacked the concept?
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[citation needed]
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Yes, Microsoft was the customer. YOU are the product.
Re:Chromebook is a waste (Score:5, Informative)
Chromebooks are actually doing [pcmag.com] pretty [thestreet.com] well [omgchrome.com].
I'm a huge Android fan, but there are some issues with apps on Android that don't translate too well to the laptop experience (yet):
That said, Android is open source. You're free to do a port yourself [cyanogenmod.org]. Some have done so already [gigaom.com].
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Re:Chromebook is a waste (Score:4, Informative)
Is 500,000 in sales considered pretty [digitimes.com] good? To put this in comparison the Surface has been considered a disaster [digitaltrends.com] by many here (myself included) and that sold 1.7 million.
I won't argue your other points on mouse and multiple on-screen app windows as they are quite valid. My point is that I think Google could be much more successful in pushing Android on laptops than Chrome. Certainly there is work that would be needed, but that is absolutely paltry compared to the amount of work that it would take to bring Chrome up to par in terms of apps, developer familiarity and market acceptance.
They might do it (Score:1)
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Android does not have a proper multi-window management yet.
On the upside, neither does anything else anymore. Well KDE maybe. For the rest, the best you can do is make everything full screen with tabs and switch between them. You can put a full screen window on each monitor if you have more monitors though. There are even monitors with built in window managers to make up for OS deficiencies, where you can present a single monitor to the PC as multiple. That sort of highlights the sad state of modern GUIs.
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Why bother making Chromebooks, the market doesn't much seem to care for them.
Because netbooks became uncool, but the market for them didn't go away.
There's still a substantial market for a small, cheap, light laptop that boots fast and lets you browse the web and type the occasional document. Aren't Chromebooks the best-selling 'laptops' on Amazon these days?
The real question is: will these run Linux, so I can eventually replace my old netbook with one when it dies?
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Agreed, and an Android based notebook can be made for netbook based prices. Chromebooks are certainly popular on Amazon, but overall they have only sold about 500,000 [digitimes.com] units so far. That's actually a pretty small fraction of the market and it doesn't change my argument.
I couldn't agree with you mo
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Several Linux Kernel Devs have installed Fedora on the high end Pixel. I don't know if there are any efforts to support any other machines.
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Most people who see my Acer Chromebook want one. A family friend bought one after I lent him mine while I fixed his laptop... as soon as his wife saw the one he bought, she has kept it as her own. Many people only need to do things via the web these days. I got mine for tech consulting, so I could have a keyboard if I needed to look something up, or kill time in the kitchen at home, but I have noticed that most people who try mine, end up buying one because the price is reasonable (except The Pixel) and gre
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If you've ever used a dirt-cheap tablet, you know the answer to that...
Android and its apps make numerous assumptions. Things like almost-always connected internet access... GPS hardware... Accelerometers... Touch screens. Small screen sizes that limit multitasking..
WTF is the sub-$300 market? (Score:2)
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2421744,00.asp
I think the market says they want them. Chromebook now owns 25% of sub $300 market.
I spent 90% of my time on a laptop browsing the internet. A chromebook is my next upgrade.
No where does it quantify this with actual numbers. Kind of like when Amazon says the Kindle is the top selling product on Amazon. Without actual unit numbers it's hard to find out what the $300 market even means.
I laugh every time I hear Amazon decide to trot out their "Kindle rulz!" comments without numbers. If you aren't willing to show how much you've sold you can't say your product is popular at all. SalesRank is not a quantity.
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Why bother making Chromebooks, the market doesn't much seem to care for them. Instead they should be putting Android onto laptops since the market is already very familiar with Android and the marketplace is already well stocked with apps.
Because having to write fully functional webapps and *several* different smartdevice apps sucks. It costs money and takes energy away from developing kick-arse stuff because you have to simultaneously maintain and update several different, incompatible platforms. You should ideally also release all new features simultaneously - neither fun nor cheap. Or we could all just write responsive webapps when they can get the browser experience seamless across devices, and for that you need to keep some momentum up
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I've never understood this either. Why don't I just want a tablet with keyboard at the same $300 price point new Chromebook devices are coming in at.
12" (class) screens? Seriously?
Where's my >14" (class) screen tablets? I'll get a keyboard, thanks.
Chromebooks are torpedoes for Apple/Microsoft (Score:2)
Why bother making Chromebooks, the market doesn't much seem to care for them.
The Chromebook is a dual-attack against Google's biggest competitors/threats - Microsoft and Apple.
By sucking all the profit margin out of the low end, Microsoft can't levy it's Windows tax on each machine sold. Neither does a Chromebook carry MS Office. Both wins if you're hoping Microsoft's top line sinks... the fact that Apple rules the roost at the top end puts Microsoft in the same vice-grip that effectively killed Nokia and Blackberry in the smartphone space.
By simplifying ChromeOS so not even updat
What it doesn't have (Score:2)
An usable screen size for anyone over 40, a keyboard usable by anyone but a small handed former female Foxxcon employee (slave?), storage of any real kind, because *YOU* use the *Cloud* and the cloud is the continuation of turning the computer into a fixed media device... or for the slow minded out there, a TV.
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the cloud is the continuation of turning the computer into a fixed media device... or for the slow minded out there, a TV.
+1 Insightful
Mfg using Chrome to offload their stockpile (Score:1)
Re:Mfg using Chrome to offload their stockpile (Score:4, Informative)
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Insightful. Sorry no mod points, but having shopped for a laptop recently I was sorely disapointed. Luckily, Lenovo offers a 1080 thinkbook. In general, the configurability of laptops is way down from what it once was. I miss gateway...
Do Not Want (Score:2)
If anything this should have an HD display, 4-8 core processor, and 8GB ram for me to even care about it.
Likewise, on the non-mobile front, I wish Cubie and these other manufacturers would produce something that'd fit in a standard case, accept standard RAM modules
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but I really just want to see some ARM systems put out that are comparable to modern x86 machines in terms of specs.
Why do you care if it's ARM? There are plenty of actual x86 machines that would meet your requirements available today.
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No ARM CPU exists that provides performance that is comparable to an i3/i5/i7 x86 CPU. And if one did exist, it would have similar power characteristics. If the OP is willing to give up big-core CPU performance and would be willing to accept ARM-level performance, Intel's latest Atom, "Bay Trail", has as good or better performance and power characteristics to the low-power ARM stuff available today.
*sigh* (Score:3)
> The C720 Chromebook has an 11.6-inch anti-glare
> widescreen, with a 1,366-by-768 resolution.
So it's like the 1024x768 Compaq laptop I had 15 years ago, but with 342 more pixels of width? Progress!
Dear laptop makers: moar pixels, please. Even my original 13" MacBook from 2006 ago had more vertical pixels. (1280x800)
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1366*768 is more pixels than 1280*800, tens of thousands more pixels.
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This machine is also about a fifth of the price. The resolution still sucks of course, but it certainly is cheap.
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1) It's only about 25,000 more pixels. So 2.5 "tens of thousands" more.
2) I said the MacBook had more VERTICAL pixels. I.e., height. 800 > 768.
Too bad about the Chrome. (Score:2)
I had a Chromebook for about 3 days. Most of that time it was back in the box waiting for my next run to town to return it. I'd bought the Acer with a 320 gig hard drive expecting to either use it as a media player or torrent machine depending on which it did better. Neither. It can't access local network resources. And it couldn't handle any of my media files even tho they're h.264 and it's supposed to be able to play that format. So no media player. What about torrent clients? Nope. All I could f
Questions (Score:4, Interesting)
How does Ubuntu run on it? Or any other decent linux distro? How is battery life under GNU/Linux? Does it also run Wine? (Need to run some windows apps on it)
I'm interested in getting one as a replacement for my EEE, especially since it has a non-glare screen, but this "Chrome OS" would be useless for me.
Re:Questions (Score:5, Informative)
It runs OK (google Chrubuntu), but the WiFi and trackpad drivers were so finicky that it was a deal breaker. ChromeOS actually is a stripped down version of Linux, which means that you can actually run a full-blown linux desktop along side it via Crouton (using a chroot). If that sounds tedious, it is actually fool-proof to install.
Since the trackpad and WiFi drivers are still handled by ChromeOS (again, a linux kernel), it works great! If you are looking for a good linux laptop, I'd highly recommend it, especially if price and battery are your two main considerations.
12V charging is better than USB... (Score:4, Informative)
To hell with your freaky mutually-incompatible and non-standard ways to get 3amps over USB! Give me a 12V DC, positive-center barrel plug any day... Vastly more durable than MicroUSB junk, and far cheaper.
Car adapters cost $3, since they're just a cord... Wall adapters are also dirt-cheap, and I can use any of the dozen I have lying around... Everything from my Netbook, to my GbE switch, to my computer speakers, to my NiMH battery charger, to my portable fan, to my UPSes, to my old video game consoles, ALL run on 12V DC. They can all swap adapters, because there's no crazy non-standard resistor levels on other pins that make half of them incompatible with the other half... And unlike MicroUSB jacks with the tiny reed in the center, barrel plugs are practically bullet-proof, can be inserted easily in any orientation, etc.
I tolerate MicroUSB as a middle-of-the-road standard, that is better than a complete mis-mash of incompatible charging connectors, and varying voltages (3? 7.5? 9? WTF?), but only for small devices. Tablets should NEVER have started using it, and larger phones that can't fully charge with 5V should be jumping to 12V DC barrel-plugs ASAP, and getting everyone on a compatible, higher-power standard.
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To hell with your freaky mutually-incompatible and non-standard ways to get 3amps over USB!
USB3 provides completely standard 5A charging. It's great that you love 12V. I don't think I have a single 12V device, all my notebook-type devices are 19V with weird plugs, and everything else is a random value from 3V to 24V (but strangely not 12V), sometimes AC and sometimes DC, with no relation between plug type and voltage or current requirements. I have discarded otherwise-functioning devices because I lost the power cord and it was not worth it to get a new one.
I really look forward to getting it all
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Not really... USB3 ports are only 900mAh. High power is only possible for dedicated "charging" ports that can't really do any actual USB things.
And the USB3 charging-only scheme is technically "standard" only in that the company that writes the specs endorsed one of the incompatible methods... So if companies don't adopt it, then it may be an official/de-jury standard, but it will still be de-facto non-standard.
1366x768 (Score:2)
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Far lower, the Galaxy S4 has an impressive 1080 x 1920 pixels on it's pocket sized screen.
But then Acer build things as cheaply as they possably can. The S4 will likely keep working years longer than anything from Acer and give you far fewer problems.
Acer quality (Score:3)
Everything, and I mean everything, I ever brought from acer stopped working within 3 years. They make the lowest cost laptops because they use the cheapest parts. Saving $50 by buying acer is false economy.
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Infinite battery life (Score:1)
So... if it charges via micro USB and has a USB port then all I need a microUSB cable for INFINITE battery life? I'm sold.
Why I use my Samsung Chromebook all the time (Score:3)
I am using it way more than my windows notebook, my android tablet, my kindle, or my ipod touch.
- fast boot
- small and lightweight
- long battery life
- enough power to load websites in a reasonable time
- real keyboard
- no worries about malware
- screen, and keyboard, big enough to be useful
- screen is high enough resolution for everything I use it for - and I am well over 40 years old.
It is not perfect for everything. But for the $145 I paid, I'm very happy. I'd buy it again.