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Wave of Chrome devices spurred by Intel chip developments

by Mark Tyson on 7 May 2014, 10:30

Tags: Chrome OS

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Intel and several other major tech companies got together in San Francisco yesterday to unveil a wide ranging new lineup of Chrome devices. We saw the first such devices powered by Intel Celeron Chips based upon the Bay Trail-M SoC and at the other end of the performance scale a new class of Chromebooks based around Haswell Core i3 processors. These i3 Chromebooks will be the most powerful yet and Intel proudly boasted of delivering the "Best Performance and Battery Life for Every Price Point" - obviously comparing its new flock to the ARM powered alternatives.

Intel's Navin Shenoy, vice president and general manager of Intel Mobile Client Platforms Group co-hosted the event with Google's Caesar Sengupta, vice president, product management, Chrome OS at Google and were met on stage by execs from various companies such as Acer, Dell and Lenovo.

"Intel has grown to become the No. 1 microprocessor in Chrome systems," said Shenoy. "We've been working on five generations of Chrome and after Google, Intel is the largest contributor to the Chromium OS. Intel chips are the first and only to support 64-bit Chrome OS. This deep history and investment combined with our stellar Bay Trail and Haswell SoCs mean Intel can offer the best performing devices at every price point in the Chrome category. When people are shopping for Chrome devices, they should look for Intel Inside." Google's Sengupta also came forward to remind us how well Chromebooks are selling on Amazon.com - accounting for two of the top three laptops in the sales chart.

Celeron

Chromebooks packing the Intel Celeron Chips based upon the Bay Trail-M SoC will offer up to 11 hours of battery life. We also hear that these designs will be fanless, for a closer to tablet experience. ASUS, Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba have already announced some Chromebooks running on this family of processors. ASUS will launch a C200 and C300 Chromebook with 11.6 and 13.3-inch screens respectively. Acer has one thin fanless design in production. Lenovo has two; the N20 Chromebook and N20p Chromebook. The 'p' model boasts Lenovo's ever more familiar multi-mode design with a touch screen incorporated too. Intel also previewed its Education Chromebook reference design based upon similar specs.

Core i3

Chromebooks featuring this 4th gen Intel processor are to be the fastest yet, we are told. This will help ChromeOS users keep a peppy level of performance even with multiple tabs open with media rich web pages, running various web apps and taking part in Google Hangouts with multiple parties. Dell and Acer will be making such devices. Dell will bring the new configuration into its Chromebook 11 range, popular in US schools. Acer will expand its C720 Chromebook range with the Core i3 processor. Expect this updated Acer to arrive early in the back-to-school season for $349.

Microsoft takes a shot at a $199 laptop

As reported on eWeek yesterday, Microsoft's one-day special US$199 sale on Asus X200-MA Windows 8 touchscreen laptop computers ended just six hours after it had started. It seems that the lack of stock available to people who tried to make an order after 9am EDT has provided a negative experience for many on what should have been a positive event for Microsoft. (The sale started at 3am EDT) Exactly how much stock was reserved for this special sale is unknown. Will this event's sales success influence OEMs to make yet cheaper Windows notebooks to compete with Chromebooks at the low end?



HEXUS Forums :: 6 Comments

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HEXUS
News - Wave of Chrome devices spurred by Intel contra revenue.

There, fixed that for you :D
This is almost thin computing for the masses. Despite all the ‘hackers’ (both illegal and government) everyone seems to be happy to shove everything into the cloud. Google showed good vision when developing ChromeOS.
From what I've read. Even though Chrome OS is cloud based, you can store all your own personal files and details on the device or portable storage.

I've glad more of these are coming. With this, more pressure is on Microsoft to do better with Windows and cheaper.
You can do just that but everything is setup for the cloud including the actual programs that your running which may never actually be on your chrome device. Its just a simplistic OS and does more than 90% of what users require on a day to day basis. Pure genius.

Windows needs to be free of charge and de-bloated.
DanceswithUnix
HEXUS
News - Wave of Chrome devices spurred by Intel's dumping.
There, fixed that for you :D

There, fixed your fix for you! “Contra Revenue” indeed, it's basically below costs selling. I guess the various competition authorities can only take action if they can prove that the below cost selling is damaging local competitors.

Still, antics like is one more reason why even Intel's largess is unlikely to persuade big players that Intel's Atom strategy will benefit them in the long run. I'm sure plenty of Taiwanese OEMs have long enough memories to know that Intel likes to abuse their dominance with uncompetitive strategies, strategic supply allocation, and so on.