The holidays are approaching fast, and it’s time to start picking up some gifts: for friends, family, even yourself. But when you’re picking out what to go with, it’s sometimes wise to stay away from the absolute best. Sometimes you just want the best value—something that’s worth every shiny, hard-earned penny. More »
Google is doing a splendid job of manufacturing low-cost Chromebooks. The latest stunner is the Acer C7 Chromebook which costs around $199. Google also announced a Chromebook from Samsung last month in San Francisco and it retails for $249. If you’re wondering what’s next, the China Times is reporting that Google is planning to launch a touch-enabled Chromebook soon, possibly before the end of this year.
Google might even sell the said Chromebook under its own brand. The China Times added that the size of the new Chromebook is still tentative and that Google has already ordered 20 million units of the mystery device from Compal Electronics, a Taiwanese original design manufacturer (ODM). The new Chromebook could be running Google’s very own Chrome OS, although we are also hearing that Google might allow it to run Android as well. The report from the China Times raises more questions that answers. For now, let’s take it with a grain of salt.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Surface is the most popular Windows 8/ RT device, says report, Barnes & Noble Nook reading app arrives on Windows 8 and Windows RT,
It’s been just over a month since Google unveiled its gorgeous and affordable $249 Samsung Chromebook only to surprise us days later with an even cheaper system, the $199 Acer C7 Chromebook. At first glance, these two laptops are very similar, both in purpose (cloud-based computing on a budget) and in specs (11.6-inch display, dual-core CPU, 2GB of RAM), but there are significant differences under the hood. Samsung’s offering achieves its svelte form factor, 6.5-hour battery life and attractive price via a fully integrated and fanless ARM-based design while Acer takes a more conservative approach — cramming standard off-the-shelf components like a 2.5-inch hard drive, small-outline memory module, mini-PCIe WiFi card, and Intel Celeron processor into a traditional netbook-like chassis. Does being $50 cheaper make up for the C7’s lack of sex appeal and short 4-hour battery life? What other compromises in performance and build quality (if any) were made to achieve this lower cost? Most importantly, which budget Chromebook is right for you? Find out after the break.
Gallery: Acer C7 Chromebook review
Continue reading Acer C7 Chromebook review: Chrome OS on the cheap, but at what cost?
Google is reportedly planning a Chromebook of its own, pushing out a Google-branded touchscreen notebook to follow its Nexus-brand smartphones and tablets. The Chrome OS laptop would be made by Compal, according to the China Times, with the finished product apparently set to ship by the end of 2012.
Two new Chrome OS laptops have debuted in recent weeks, with Acer chasing the budget end of the market with its $199 A7, while Samsung’s Series 3 is only a little more expensive at $249. Although both running Google’s operating system, the two models take different approaches to the underlying hardware: the A7 sticks to Intel’s Atom chip, whereas the Series 3 uses a more frugal ARM-based processor for longer runtimes.
It’s unclear which footsteps Google might follow in with its own machine, with no hardware specifics revealed. Given the company has experience already with ARM chips in the Nexus range, however, and the more impressive battery life such processors generally allow, that would perhaps seem the more likely choice.
Google has apparently ordered around 20m units of the new, unnamed Chromebook, which it’s suggested may be a more tentative move so as to gauge interest in the platform. Alternatively, it could be to seed units with developers, as Google did initially with the Atom-based Cr-48.
[via DigiTimes]
Google branded touchscreen Chromebook due 2012 tip insiders is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
What would be a neat trick to round off a perfect holiday with friends, family, and — if you’re lucky — some bargain-priced tech? How about getting your smug, contented face up on the screens in Times Square? Not got the big corporate budget? No worries, as Google’s here to pick up the tab as part of a Chromebook promotion, and possibly make it happen for you. Submit a picture at the source link, along with a snappy “For… ” caption, and you could find yourself, your mom, your cat, or football team up there for all to see. We were going to submit one of our own, but, well y’know, we’re still wearing the t-shirt.
Filed under: Misc, Internet, Google
Source: Gallery For Everyone
Google issued an update this week for the developer edition of Chrome OS, which adds extended display support via HDMI or VGA. Chromebooks packing A15 and Intel Celeron processors are said to fit the bill, while older machines such as the Cr-48 may experience a few hangups. The Dev Channel update also brings a newer version of Flash and Intelligent Window positioning, which automatically organizes your content displayed. If you’d like to go hands-on with these new features before they make their official debut, you’ll need to switch your Chromebook over to the Developer Channel. This can be done by toggling: Menu, Settings, Help, More Info and then selecting the Dev Channel option. However, if patience is your strong suit and you prefer to wait for a certified stable release, at least you now know what lies ahead.
Filed under: Laptops, Software, Google
Via: Liliputing
Source: Google
The Acer C7 Chromebook is the most recent addition to the Chromebook universe and one of Google’s chosen few to be featured on their very own Chomebook portal. This device sits aside the Samsung Series 3 Chromebook as one of three (the other being a slightly higher-powered Samsung Chromebook 550.) This device reduces the baseline price of a Chromebook in general down to $199 and brings with it a slightly thicker and less MacBook Air-looking solution than Samsung’s Series 3 – but where does that extra $50 USD go?
Like each of the three hero Chromebooks being shown by Google right this minute, you get 100GB of Google Drive storage for free for 2 years – once it runs out, you simply cannot add any more files to that extra space, but if you want, you can certainly keep your files up there forever (so they say.) Other than this, it’s a whole different ballgame. This machine has an 11.6-inch display that has generally OK viewing angles, but don’t expect to sit anywhere other than directly in front of or to the left or right of it, or you’ll start to see the light.
You’ve got a boot time that’s “under 20 seconds”, so Google says and quotes correctly, leading us to note that yes, indeed, it is a fast machine. It’s quickness should be assumed, of course, due to the very lightweight nature of Chrome OS. It’s essentially a small storage space on your device tied with the Google Chrome web browser – that’s what Chrome OS is, and that’s what it remains here with the Acer solution.
The 4 hours of battery life you’re quoted exists when you’re actively using the device for 4 hours straight, on the web. If you leave the device open and asleep, you’ll easily get several days of uptime. The processor inside this beast is extremely good at battery conservation, that’s for certain. We’ve literally had the device on for three days at a time with no more than 20 percent battery drain – fully asleep, mind you, with no power cord, either.
You can connect this device to a larger monitor via VGA or HDMI if you like, with the second monitor offering you a mirror of what your Chromebook is showing off. This is good for showing webpages to your colleagues as well as YouTube videos – or your Google Play movie collection. You can also connect to other devices with the three USB ports on this device quite easily, and the whole machine works with a dual wi-fi chip that’s able to connect anywhere in your house – with plastic being the main material used here, this machine has no trouble sending or receiving signals of any kind.
You can connect with the Ethernet port on the left side of this device as well if you’re going for ultra-quick web connectivity. This works great to upload or download media to and from your 320 GB of build-in hard drive disk space as well as your full-sized SD/MMC card port that sits just under your keyboard down and to the left. The camera that sits above the monitor on this device is called “HD” but delivers just a generally acceptable web chat experience for Google+ Hangouts – and/or wherever else you plan on chatting via video.
This device, much like the Samsung Series 3 solution, is made for web browsing and web browsing alone. If you want the most full-featured computing experience you’ve ever laid your hands on, look elsewhere. What we’ve got here is $199 worth of hardware from top to bottom. It’s not aiming to be the most fantastically simple notebook on the planet, and as its made of primarily plastic, you wont be winning any “wow this notebook feels amazing” awards.
What you will get is a perfectly legitimate web browsing device – and if your primary reasoning behind purchasing a notebook is to browse the web, you’ve got yourself a winner right here. Google has successfully created a user experience here with Chrome OS in its current state that cuts down on everything not necessary to browse the web and have a good time doing it.
The only deterrent you should have here as far as usability goes is the touchpad. It’s not a MacBook, that’s for certain, but it’s just as high quality as the Samsung model. If you’re used to a standard netbook or a low-end notebook running Windows or Linux (with some exceptions), you’ll be perfectly satisfied with this experience tapping and scrolling.
Acer has succeeded in boiling out all the high-end features that make a notebook cost more than $400 and took Google’s Chrome OS to just about as standard and basically acceptable place as they possibly could, tagging it with a very suitable $199 pricetag. If you only want to browse the web with your notebook, and that’s it, this machine will serve you well.
Be sure to head to your local large-arena showroom store to check how this machine feels in your hands before you pick it up, then be glad you kept the other $300 you’d have otherwise spent on a notebook full of features you might never have used. Use it to buy a Google Nexus 7 and take your best pal out for a nice supper on top.
Acer C7 Chromebook Review is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
A Googler managed to load up Samsung’s latest Chromebook with Ubuntu and spelled out the process for like-minded DIYers in October, and now some benchmarks of Mountain View’s $249 machine running Raring Ringtail — which is still in development — have surfaced. With a 1.7GHz dual-core Exynos 5 Dual processor under the hood, the ARM-based machine can hang with — and in some cases beat — the likes of a 1.8GHz quad-core Intel Atom D525 chip and a 1.4GHz quad-core Calxeda Highbank node in benchmarks using the Phoronix Test Suite. The rig also holds its own when pitted against a PandaBoard equipped with an OMAP4460 1.2GHz dual-core processor. Hit the source link to dig into pages of the test results for yourself.
Filed under: Laptops, Software, Samsung, Google
Source: Phoronix
Not to be outdone with Samsung’s latest $249 Chromebook, Acer is also introducing its second-generation Chromebook that’s worth $199. We previously reported that Acer is prepping up a second-generation Chromebook and is already poised for a mid-October release. Well, it looks like Acer has just timed the launch perfectly, considering how busy October was. The new Acer C7 Chromebook promises to deliver a hassle-free computing experience with speed, built-in security, and the simplicity of automatic updates.
It sports an 11.6-inch display with a 1366 x 768 resolution and it comes with a full-size keyboard, fully clickable trackpad, and a battery that offers around 3.5 hours of battery life. Inside the new Acer Chromebook is an Intel Core processor, an HD camera, USB 2.0, a 320GB hard drive, and a whopping 100GB of free storage on Google Drive. Expect this Chromebook to hit stores tomorrow, November 13 at the price of $199. Get this on Google Play and Best Buy.
“Creating a better, simpler computer and making it available for everyone is at the core of the Chromebook vision. It’s exciting to see people using Chromebooks as the perfect additional computer in the home, and we continue to work with our partners to make them easy-to-use and more affordable,” said Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice-President for Chrome and Apps at Google. “Today, we’re delighted that our partner Acer is introducing a new addition to the Chromebook family: the new Acer C7 Chromebook.”
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Possible Acer Iconia Tab A220 spotted in GLBenchmark, Acer’s Greater China president wants Microsoft to leave the hardware to the “professionals”,
Google and Samsung recently unveiled a $249 Chromebook, which seemed like a new pricing floor for a capable, light computer that’s designed for users who spend most of their computing time on the web. Today, Google announced the new Acer C7 Chromebook on its website, which ups the ante (while lowering some specs) with a $50 cheaper Chrome OS notebook which also features an 11.6-inch display, but also boasts an Intel Core processor and a 320 GB hard drive.
The Acer Chromebook might appear more to the traditionalists out there looking for a Chrome OS-based notebook computer, since the Samsung Chromebook is a ARM-based computer that also has extremely limited onboard storage, which it supplements by shipping with 100GB of free Google Drive space. The $199 C7 also comes with that cloud storage, but has a platter drive, too, and takes a hit on battery life (eking out only 3.5 hours, compared to around 6.5 for the Samsung Chromebook).
The computer is also slightly bulkier than its $250 sibling, at 1 inch thick and weighing 3 lbs, compared to just 0.7-inches and 2.4 lbs for the Samsung. As for ports, it has HDMI and VGA out, along with three USB 2.0 ports (no high speed here), an audio/input 3.5 mm jack and an Ethernet port for wired networking. It has dual band 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi for wireless connectivity, and an HD camera for video communications.
I’ve shared my opinion that Google’s goal with its branded device collaboration projects is to get more eyeballs on its products by providing cheap, capable devices with Internet connectivity that works across a wide variety of geographies, and this netbook-inspired Chromebook is a perfect example. It’s not going to get anyone necessarily all that excited, but it’s a practical design that offers everything needed for a decent Internet experience in a very affordable package.
The C7 goes on sale tomorrow in the U.S., on Google Play and Best Buy’s website, and in the U.K. on Google Play, Amazon UK, PC World and Curry’s. Google promises to bring it to more countries in the near future.
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