The new Chromebook is currently available to pre-order in the US and UK. Photo: AFP
The latest notebook, developed with Acer and called, rather unsurprisingly, the Acer C7 Chromebook, features
a 320GB hard drive, an 11.6-inch display, Intel processor with 2GB of RAM, USB 3 and HDMI ports, 100GB of Google Drive cloud storage, and it weighs in at 1kg. But most impressively of all, the notebook is priced at just $199, $50 cheaper than the Samsung Chromebook it launched less than a month ago.
However, whereas the Samsung version was lighter and used solid-state flash memory, the Acer features a heavier, larger capacity but ultimately much cheaper traditional spinning hard disk. How that affects start-up time is so far unclear (the Samsung could boot up in less than 10 seconds as it had no drives to mount and start spinning) but, if the demand is as great as it was for Samsung's Chromebook, expect the Acer Chromebook to sell out completely within 30 days too.
The Acer 7 Chromebook goes on sale Tuesday and is available from Google Play, Amazon and Best Buy in the US and from selected retailers in the UK. And, like its other Chromebook siblings, this model represents another concerted move by Google to make technology and internet access available to all and to push people closer to the cloud.