It may not exactly be enough to make the high-end price tag any more palatable, but Chromebook Pixel owners now have another small exclusive to call their own. Google has just released a new Google+ Photos app for the device, which promises to make photo backups and sharing a bit easier. Namely, it’ll automatically upload all your new photos to Google+ when you insert an SD card, from where you can then chose which you’d like to make public. No word on when the app will hit other non-Pixel Chromebooks, but Google says they are currently working on that.
The ChromeBook Pixel is a stunningly beautiful piece of machinery. With costs ranging from $1,300 to $1,500, however, it means you’re shelling out even more than most standard ultrabooks and laptops. It also comes with 12 free Gogo passes and a full terabyte of Google Drive storage to sweeten the deal, fortunately, but who wants to buy a computer of any kind when you can win one instead? Gogo’s hooking two lucky readers up with a 64GB LTE Chromebook Pixel (this particular model is valued at $1,500), so this is one giveaway you’ll definitely want to sign up for. You can grab up to three entries: you get two just for showing up, and the third is yours if you Like Gogo on Facebook. Head to the widget below and take a chance!
Sure, you can already snag one of those Chromebooks from places such as Amazon, Best Buy and Google’s own Play shop. But, starting today, the Mountain View-based company is making various Chrome OS-sporting laptops available at more retailers around the globe — over 6,600, to be specific. Google says the likes of Walmart and Staples will now have a selection of Chromebooks up for grabs, while Office Depot, Office Max and Fry’s are expected to do the same “in the coming months.” For those across the pond, you can expect to find some of Google’s laptops at Dixon retailers in the UK, as well as Mediamarket, FNAC and Elgiganten stores in the Netherlands, France and Sweden, respectively. All in all, this is definitely a good thing for Google’s plan to get its Chromebook machines in as many locations as possible.
Chromebooks may not be the laptop of choice amongst power users, but they’re a frugal option for those who need something light and usable just to browse the web on. Google just announced that they’re tripling the number of stores that Chromebooks are available in, allowing consumers to easily obtain one for themselves. Google already
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Things have been pretty quiet on the Chromebook front since the launch of Google’s gorgeous, but pricey flagship, the Pixel. It’s arguably a hard product to beat, but then again, the Chromebook battle is really taking place at the low end of the market with machines like Acer’s inexpensive $199 C7 and Samsung’s delightful $249 ARM-based model. This is exactly the arena HP’s decided to enter with its $329 Pavilion 14, the first Chromebook with a 14-inch display. Apparently, the company’s research indicates there’s room for a larger Chromebook that’s used primarily at home where thickness, weight and battery life are less critical. While that’s difficult for road warriors like us to understand, it only takes a visit to Best Buy to see row upon row of large, cheap, generic Windows laptops, so perhaps HP is onto something. Like Acer’s C7, the Pavilion 14 is a Chromebook based on an existing PC chassis. It features an Intel Celeron processor, 2GB RAM, a 16GB SSD and Bluetooth. So how does it compare to the aforementioned competition? Is there a market for a larger Chromebook that mostly lives at home? Read on to find out.
With the Samsung GALAXY S 4 in consumer hands internationally, fully stocked with Exynos OctaCore processors, so too has a new Chromebook been tipped with the same technology. While the big.LITTLE ARM processor architecture suggested for this next-generation machine has been implemented on the GALAXY S 4 (the international edition, that is) for a split between obvious “big” and “little” tasks, its usage in Chrome may be a bit less obvious. This device could very well be introduced at the June event teased by Samsung as well.
While the technology used in the Samsung GALAXY S 4 sets “big” tasks as high-powered games, video processing, and GPS tracking, Chrome OS doesn’t generally have such high demands. Low-powered “little” tasks appear much more regularly – messaging, music, and background bits and pieces galore. These low-powered tasks are assigned to lower power cores in the SoC, therefor keeping energy demands as minimal as possible.
It’s likely that this, not so much the high-powered end of things, would be the main reason a Samsung Exynos 5410 (or something similar) would be used in a Chromebook. The tip sent to MobileGeeks this week suggests this device might never actually come to the market, mind you.
But consider the possibilities: perhaps this means Samsung will be releasing a device not unlike the Chromebook Pixel, complete with super-high-definition display and touchscreen abilities! It was no small deal when the entirety of Google I/O 2013 was given a Pixel to develop with – Samsung may just be following up with their own high-powered web-based machine soon.
Sundar Pichai has taken on quite the role expansion since he sat in the famed red chair during last year’s D10 conference here in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Back in March, he took over the Android duties from Andy Rubin, and led a significant portion of the keynote during this year’s Google I/O conference. Today, he’ll sit down with hosts Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg in order to discuss the future of Chrome, Android, apps and perhaps the universe as we know it. Join us after the break as we cover every… last… word.
HP has officially entered into the Chromebook market with their new $329 Pavilion 14 Chromebook. As a laptop, it doesn’t deviate too far from HP standards, and it still sports the same curves and style that you’d expect out of a laptop from the company. Plus, despite being a Chromebook, it feels more like a traditional Windows laptop with it’s fairly spacious keyboard and trackpad, along with the 14-inch display. However, looks aren’t everything, and it’s the internal hardware and performance that can make or break a notebook. Is the Pavilion 14 worthy of a spot on your college laptop shortlist for the upcoming school year? Let’s find out.
Hardware & Design
The Pavilion 14 — unlike traditional Chromebooks that we’ve seen before — sports a standard laptop design for those that will want something a bit more full-size, but with minimalistic elements. It sports an Intel Celeron processor, which we don’t see too often anymore in laptops, but it’s enough to power a lightweight operating system like Chrome OS. It’s clocked at a mere 1.1GHz, and is paired with 2GB of RAM, along with a 16GB solid state drive, so nothing too spectacular spec-wise, but that was expected.
Essentially, if you didn’t notice the Chrome logo on the top corner of the laptop, you would think it was a regular Windows laptop from the face of it. The whole laptop is plastic-laden, and the top has an incredibly-reflective mirror surface that’s a bit of a fingerprint magnet. Opening up the notebook reveals the standard keyboard and trackpad, which aren’t anything special, but the larger size of the laptop makes for more typing room than what other Chromebooks offer. The trackpad is dimpled, adding a comfortable textured feel to your fingers. Unfortunately, using the trackpad isn’t smooth at all, and the cursor ends up skipping around quite a bit. I ended up having to use a mouse most of the time because I found the trackpad to be pretty intolerable.
Of course, the main seller for the Pavilion 14 is in the name. The laptop has a good-looking 14-inch display, which makes it one of the larger Chromebooks that we’ve seen, but the relatively low 1366×768 resolution leaves a bit to be desired. Then again, this is to be expected in a budget notebook like this. Connection options are a bit ample, however, with three USB 2.0 ports, an SD card reader, combination audio jack, Ethernet, and even a full-size HDMI port. Sadly, no USB 3.0 on this one, but we can’t be too surprised. There’s also no 3G or LTE chip built in, which we’ve seen in a lot of Chromebooks (as constant internet connectivity is vital to the platform), so you’ll end up having to tether to a smartphone to get internet on the go.
Other than that, there’s no optical disc drive, which is completely fine by us, but those wanting the opportunity to access the occasional disc will have to think twice. However, in this day and age, we’d be surprised if anyone actually needed to use a disc, and it certainly makes the entire package much lighter, coming in at a just bit over 3.5 pounds.
Overall, the design of the laptop feels solid for what you’re paying for, but plastic-built laptops will always have a hint of cheapness, and durability is always a concern in this case. The keyboard and trackpad are pretty cheap, but for the price you’re paying, you can’t expect anything too top tier.
Software
We’ve talked about Chrome OS before in past Chromebook reviews, so I won’t go into a lot of redundant details here, but there a few things to note specifically. First off, the Chrome OS install on the Pavilion 14 is mostly stock, with only an “@HP” icon in the app launcher that takes you to the HP registration page for the Chromebook.
If you don’t know a lot about Chrome OS, it’s essentially just a browser, and while it does have a desktop of sorts, there’s no file browser exactly (just a “Downloads” folder and your Google Drive). You can also download apps, but they’re essentially just web apps that appear in the app launcher on the bottom-left. Clicking on one will simply open the web browser to that web app. You can pin apps to the “dock” of sorts, similar to pinning programs to the taskbar in Windows, and the bottom-right corner is where you can access settings, as well as toggle the WiFi and adjust the volume.
Performance & Battery
It’s hard to judge Chrome OS performance using pure numbers, as you can’t really run benchmarks, so we simply had to base the speed of the laptop on how fast apps opened and whether or not we experienced any significant lag while playing around with the Pavilion 14. Indeed, despite the slow Celeron processor, Chrome OS performed as we expected, and boot-up and shutdown times were extremely speedy. It wasn’t necessarily an instant-on type of boot-up, but it almost felt like an older computer waking up from sleep, taking about five or so seconds to get to the desktop. Shutting down was even a bit quicker, taking only about three seconds to go completely black.
One feature that may bother some users is that when you open the lid, the laptop will automatically turn on. Obviously, this feature will prevent you from having to press the power button, thus saving an extra step, but it was a bit cumbersome when I wanted to open up the laptop to show off the keyboard or trackpad to someone without having the whole thing boot up. I haven’t found a setting that will disable this feature either.
As for battery, HP claims that the Pavilion 14 can last for up to 4 hours and 15 minutes on a single charge, which isn’t very long at all, especially for such a low-powered machine. However, we were getting closer to five hours with light web browsing. Obviously, though, streaming any kind of video on YouTube or Netflix will see the battery life diminish quite a bit (about three hours in our testing), but that’s definitely to be expected. Sadly, though, we were hoping to get at least six or seven hours out of the battery during light use at least, especially since it’s a larger laptop with room for a bigger battery than most Chromebooks, so we were still a bit disappointed to only get five hours, despite exceeding HP’s own battery ratings.
It’s also important to note that even turning off the power completely and closing the lid for overnight storage still eats away at battery life from what we’ve found. We stopped playing around with the laptop for the night when it had around 82% left in the battery. We made sure to completely shut it down for the night, but when we booted it up in the morning, we noticed the battery was mysteriously drained to 72%, hinting to the possibility that the Chromebook actually doesn’t shut down completely without taking the battery out, probably to make sure it boots up quickly without hesitation.
Wrap-Up
The HP Pavilion 14 is the company’s first stab at a Chromebook, and instead of just mostly copying what Samsung and Acer have done with their Chromebook options, HP made a one-of-a-kind option, with the minimalistic performance and operating system mixed with the look and feel of a standard Windows laptop. However, this isn’t the notebook for everyone. Chrome OS is a very niche operating system, and it’s really only suited for casual users who surf the web, check email, stream media, etc. The Pavilion 14 isn’t the cheapest Chromebook option, but the larger 14-inch display is the real kicker here, and it’s perfect for those that want a lightweight OS in a slightly larger package.
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