First Glance Acer C720 Chromebook

Picture courtesy of gigaom.com

Acer announced on Friday that they were launching the Acer C720 Chromebook.

This particular Chromebook will be one of the newer Chromebooks that come with a processor based on Intels new Haswell architecture. The C720 comes equipped with the Celeron 2955U, 4GB of ram, and a 16GB SSD drive. It also comes equipped with a decent screen, 1366×768 resolution, full keyboard and less then 7 second boot time.

For a computer listed at $249 USD, those specs aren’t so bad. I don’t think it will beat any new speed records, but for anyone needing something light, portable and to check emails/note taking with, it should do perfect. Hopefully we can get our hands on them soon and see what kind of real world performance they have. I am hoping Chromebooks turn into a real viable solution as I think they are a great idea with a lot of potential.

HP Chromebook 11

Google is an amazing company. They seem to be able to pump out new and awesome products all the time. Their latest product is the new HP Chromebook 11.

Priced at $280, it is an affordable computer that seems to have enough guts inside to do most of what people what. It comes with a Samsung Exynos 5250 process, which is one of Samsung’s dual core processors. Although not an Intel powerhouse, for daily computing it will work just fine for the average consumer. It also comes with 2GB of ram, 16GB solid state drive, wireless N, and up to 6 hours of battery life. On top of that it will also be able to charge via micro usb. Micro USB is what charges most mobile consumer electronics, including Android phones.

I have yet to use a Chrome book for any length of time myself, but apparently they work pretty well as a Linux box as well, which is something to consider if you do not want to be using the Chrome OS.  For the price that it is being offered at, the quality sounds like it is going to be delivered. Making this a huge value proposition to anyone needing something basic for on the go, or just an inexpensive solution.

References:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/08/google-reveals-hp-chromebook-11-a-279-chrome-os-notebook-that-charges-via-micro-usb/

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/google-announces-279-chromebook-pixel-inspired-hp-chromebook-11/

Netbooks – A Thought

I have been using a netbook for a while now, and have had several family members use netbooks. After a few weeks of use and some thought about that I might need in terms of a computer in the near future I decided to write a bit about my thoughts on the whole netbook situation. Keep in mind, whether or not a Chromebook is a considered a netbook officially or not, they’re netbooks to me.

I originally purchased the Acer Aspire One due to my last computer dieng, and because of my job as a blogger and working in the marketing profession, I needed something by the next day. Given I didn’t have a lot of money to blow on a laptop, I figured this would do me for a couple of weeks until I could do my research on get on something good. Although this computer was never intended to be my full time computer, I have to admit it has done a pretty good job.  At first glance you think the screen size would be a big issue, and the first couple days it was. I had the same issue with the keyboard. If you have really chubby hands like I do, small keyboards are not your friend. However, the screen size is not as big as a problem long term as I thought it might. I seem to have adjust reasonably well, and with most sites now running HTML5 and CSS, if it is written well the screen sizes adapt reasonably well. They keyboard is still a pain in the ass, so the only thing I could suggest to anyone considering any netbook is to get an external keyboard and attach it.

Most netbooks now come with a reasonable amount of ram, 2GB + is the standard, and given the 1GB in this netbook, I would say 2GB is the bare minimum. Due to (I presume) the low ram, even Xubuntu can get a bit laggy sometimes, but generally speaking it runs pretty smooth. You just have to watch how many programs/windows you are trying to run at once.

All the netbooks I have used have the same general issues with screen and keyboard size. But I think if you accept there are going to be these limitations, the more modern netbooks can handle most of what people are wanting to do on the go anyhow. I have used several Asus netbooks as well and ran into no issue with performance, same with the Chromebooks. They run 95% of what most people do with no issues.

If you need something ultra portable I would suggest considering a netbook, just know and accept the limitiations before you complain it isn’t your 17 inch desktop replacement.

I give the netbook platform 5 crushed beer cans out of 6.