HP Chromebook Confirmed: Available Now For $329

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• Lonyo - Friday, February 8, 2013 - link

  $330 or so gets you the same specs but either 11.6" or 15.6" screen, 4GB RAM and a 320GB mechanical drive, with Windows 8.
  
  Unless you really need a 14" device, you're better off buying a regular Windows laptop, and then installing a different OS, and if you must, selling the mechanical drive and buying your own tiny SSD.
  
  Seems stupidly priced for what it offers.

• DudleyUC - Friday, February 8, 2013 - link

  Totally agree, this is less portable than a tablet and less powerful than a budget laptop, but not significantly cheaper than either.

• jabber - Saturday, February 9, 2013 - link

  Well I've shown my Chromebook to half a dozen 'normal PC users' since I've had it and four of them have bought one since. Basically they were "Oh wow it does all I need without all the messing about with Office, viruses etc.!"
  
  Lot of interest in my local circles since I bought one. Only going to get bigger.
  
  Even mum and dad want one.
  
  Can it browse the web? Yes
  Can it do Facebook? Yes
  Can it do Twitter? Yes
  Can it do Ebay?Yes
  Can it write a letter? Yes
  Can it do a spreadsheet? Yes
  Can I store docs and photos? Yes
  Is it faster than my 7 year old XP laptop? Yes
  
  Do I have to worry about Viruses? No
  Is it expensive? No.
  Do I have to learn anything new to use it? NO!

• kmmatney - Sunday, February 10, 2013 - link

  Windows 8 comes with Antivirus built-in, so you don't have to separately install it.
  
  "Do I have to learn anything new to use it? NO"
  
  I would say that always been true of Linux when I first tried it - I just installed Ubuntu and everything worked fine - at first. As soon as I tried anything new, it became very complicated very fast, and I finally gave up. Hopefully the Chrome OS will do better, but it still has an uphill battle. I don't think any new OS will gain much traction until businesses start using them.

• JCheng - Sunday, February 10, 2013 - link

  Or put another way, more portable than a budget laptop and more powerful than a tablet, but not more expensive than either.

• ShieTar - Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - link

  Yeah, actually at 2x1.10 GHz its unlikely to be more powerfull than any modern quad-core tablet.
  
  And more portable? By the numbers, sure. But do you really have a 14" coat pocket? Are you strong enough to comfortably hold a 14'' in one hand and type with the other? Personally, I can't see anything I would rather do with a 14" than a 15.4". If I need portable operation, I'd even prefer 7" over 10", but as long as I have a table to put my PC on, I have really no problem putting a light 15" into my backpack to get there.
  
  This offer is basically a oversized netbook with a heavily restricted OS. You pay 100$ to 150$ bonus for the larger screen, and give up 300GB of local storage. Annother 50$ will get you back the storage, give you an even bigger screen and a numpad in your keyboard, an optical drive and a fully functional operating system. Or, if you value portability, 50$ more will also get you the Asus Transformer.
  
  The ChromeBooks offer may not be horrible, but I find it to be second-best for basically every user imaginable. Except maybe very young teenagers for whom the 15" option would be already too heavy. But i guess everybody in that age-group is happy with tablets anyways.

• piiman - Saturday, February 16, 2013 - link

  On top of that I've alredy seen other Chrome Books for 199.99 in BestBuy's.
  So this one seems little high.

• Hector2 - Saturday, February 9, 2013 - link

  Yep. I got a full-sized 15" Lenovo Win8 laptop recently on sale for $280. Dual core 32nm 2.4GHz Celeron B980 with 4GB of ram and 320GB HDD. Saw some other low end $300-$350 full size laptops there as well. Performance has been really good.

• karasaj - Friday, February 8, 2013 - link

  Considering the specs, I second, third, or fourth or fifth what is said above me. This is much too expensive, especially considering the fact that the display will probably be terrible. Samsung's chromebook had at least a decent (even good by notebook standards - ugh) display, for less cost, and the A15 isn't THAT much worse (especially for web browsing) and will offer better battery life. I don't see this doing well (at least with a marginally well informed consumer)

• karasaj - Friday, February 8, 2013 - link

  Anandtech, we need an edit feature! :P
  
  Plus the fact that Acer's C7 is virtually identical (?) for 200$.