Shaking things up
The first day of the Google I/O developer conference was all about Android, and the second focused on Chrome. The highlight was the launch of the first Chromebooks from Samsung and Acer. These run the Chrome OS, which in its current form seems to be the bare minimum you need to be able to start a notebook and launch the Chrome browser.
It seems the point of Chromebooks is that pretty much everything is done in the cloud, using Google products of course. In this respect it's quite a similar concept to Android, for which Google charges no license fee in order to drive captive traffic to its various products and services where it can serve ads to them.
Google says these are not typical notebooks and there's no arguing with that. Apart from the absence of an established OS, they run on the Intel Atom N570 chip. We generally define a netbook as a mobile PC running on an Atom chip, and while the N570 is at the upper boundary with two cores, four threads and a TDP of 8.5 watts, it's still an Atom.
But the point of the Chromebook is that it's not overly dependent on the processor, with most stuff happening in the cloud. The performance bottleneck instead is just as likely to be Internet bandwidth, and both launch models will come with optional 3G, which seems to suddenly cost half what it does on tablets.
There are a couple of vids below, but you can also find out more at google.com/chromebook. Samsung has announced UK details including specs. The Series 5 will launch in the UK on 24 June through Amazon and PC World, costing £349 for the Wi-Fi only one and £399 with 3G. The Acer one is expected to be a bit cheaper, but there was no UK announcement at time of writing.
Samsung Series 5 specs:
- CPU: Intel N570 1.66Ghz Dual Core
- Operating System: Chrome OS
- Storage: SSD 16GB
- Memory: 2GB DDR3
- Screen: 12.1-inch WXGA LCD (1280x800), SuperBright (300 nit)
- Resolution: 1280x800
- Security: TPM
- Battery: Li-Ion Polymer 61 Wh, Up to 8.5Hrs
- Weight: 3.2 lbs.
- I/O Ports: 2 x USB, SIM Card Slot, 4-In-1 (SD, SDHC, MMC), VGA Dongle, DC-in
There's also a novel subscription model for business and education. Engadget has done a good analysis of the subscription packages, but in summary Google wants three year contracts costing up to $31 per user per month for a Chromebook plus full support. Education gets it $8 cheaper per month, but amazingly this doesn't include Google Apps.
Google seems to be hoping the savings on maintenance and things like built-in security software will be viewed as sufficient savings to justify the effective doubling of the cost. For consumers the choice will be not dissimilar to when netbooks first came out - how many of the features you're used to having are you prepared to go without?
