A Chromebook made by Hewlett Packard and sporting an Atair 4G/LTE chip is now available in retail in the US. This is the first affordable LTE Chromebook made available to the market so far. The HP Chromebook 11 was originally launched back in October and this new fast cellular variant is available for just a $50 premium (after a $50 mail-in rebate on the retail price of $379).
As readers will know an internet connection is vital to a lot of the Cloud based functionality available to Chromebook users so the cellular work-anywhere boost made available from 4G/LTE could really help a Chromebook-user-on-the-go's productivity.
With regard to the use of the Altair chipset chosen to help make this affordable Chromebook with LTE happen Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Altair said his firm was extremely proud of HP and Google selecting the FourGee-3100/6202 chipset for the new Chromebook. "Our solution equips the Chromebook with a dependable and incredibly fast Internet connection. By focusing on 100% LTE and eliminating costly 3G components, we were able to help our partners lower the cost of this critical LTE connectivity feature." Eshed concluded his statement by sharing his wireless utopian view; "We see this product launch as another important milestone towards achieving our mission of bringing LTE-enabled devices to everyone."
The HP Chromebook 11 with 4G/LTE has the following spec:
- Screen: 11.6-inches 1366x768 pixels, LED backlight
- Processor: Samsung Exynos 5 Dual (Exynos 5250) based on ARM Cortex-A15 architecture
- RAM: 2GB
- Storage: 16GB flash plus Google Drive
- Physical: less than 18mm thick and 1.04Kg in weight
- Ports: 2 x USB 2.0, mic/headphone, webcam plus microphone, Bluetooth, dual-band wireless and Verizon 4G LTE connectivity
- Colours: Piano white or blue
As mentioned in the intro the HP Chromebook 11 with 4G/LTE is available now in the US. Best Buy stores are stocking the notebook which costs just $50 more, after rebates, than the Wi-Fi only version. As part of the deal buyers also have to sign up to a $10 monthly data contract with Verizon Wireless.
