New HP Laptop Would Mean Windows at Chromebook Prices 215
New submitter nrjperera (2669521) submits news of a new laptop from HP that's in Chromebook (or, a few years ago, "netbook") territory, price-wise, but loaded with Windows 8.1 instead. Microsoft has teamed up with HP to make an affordable Windows laptop to beat Google Chromebooks at their own game. German website Mobile Geeks have found some leaked information about this upcoming HP laptop dubbed Stream 14, including its specifications. According to the leaked data sheet the HP Stream 14 laptop will share similar specs to HP's cheap Chromebook. It will be shipped with an AMD A4 Micro processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of flash storage and a display with 1,366 x 768 screen resolution. Microsoft will likely offer 100GB of OneDrive cloud storage with the device to balance the limited storage option.
2 GB of RAM (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Microsoft gives manufacturers a discount if they limit their ram to 2 GB.
They are really shooting themselves in the foot, because a web browser can easily use 2 GB by itself, bringing the computer to a crawl.
Seriously.. my cell phone has 2 GB of ram.... This laptop will be nearly unusable without more memory.
This is as counterproductive as outlet stores. Sure, you pay a little less but the clothes shrink or fall apart.
And there on my ruined clothes it says Gap or Banana Republic - 2 brands I've bought lots of stuff from before, and will never ever buy again. But they made a little money, and I 'saved' a little money.
This laptop is the outlet mall version of an HP laptop - itself a brand that doesn't exactly exude quality these days..
Already had this with the Lenovo Miix... (Score:5, Interesting)
I bought my Lenovo Mix (8" tablet) with full Windows 8.1, 4GB RAM and Office 2013 Home for just $200. I added a nice bluetooth keyboard and case for another $60 and now it's my primary "walking around the company campus attending meetings" device (replacing a laptop). $260 was already in the ballpark of my son's Nexus 7 table.
I hope Microsoft (and HP and all the interchangeable PC providers) keep this up - if Apple's not going to drop price it helps consumers to have another company with deep pockets engaged in the tablet price war.
Re:The obvious /. question... (Score:2, Interesting)
It doesn't matter in this case, since -- per the fucking summary -- the computer in question is using an AMD A4 (which is x86).
The fucking summary said nothing about whether or not the system used "Secure Boot" or whether it would continue to allow the end user to add a custom bootloader or new trusted certificates. The CPU can understand whatever instruction set it wants, but that won't make any difference if the system firmware won't allow you to run code that isn't signed by Microsoft or HP.
SSE2 and NX (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I've found Windows 8.1 is better to use on low end hardware
So long as the hardware is new enough to support Windows 8.1. AMD CPUs prior to Athlon 64 and Intel CPUs prior to Pentium 4 Prescott cannot run Windows 8.1 because they lack SSE2 [wikipedia.org] or lack the NX bit [wikipedia.org].
Re:The obvious /. question... (Score:4, Interesting)
32GB of flash storage (Score:5, Interesting)
If this device is anything like the dell venue pro with 32GB, it works out to something like 17GB usable when you turn the device on, but by the time windows update runs its going to be less than 10GB free.
Lots of discussion about this on the internet, for example:
http://en.community.dell.com/s... [dell.com]
Re:The obvious /. question... (Score:4, Interesting)
In any case it just goes to show what many of us system builders and VARs knew all along, that they market for netbooks never went away, the OEMs simply priced them too high to be competitive. The sweet spot for a netbook should be between $99-$299 depending on size and features and yet when the last Asus EEEs rolled off the line the price was $449 a pop, while a 17 inch lappy was $299.