Acer C7 Chromebooks Expand Chrome OS Market

Nerval's Lobster writes "Google is following up last month's Samsung Chromebooks with a new, lower-priced one developed by Acer. Retailing for $199, the 11.6-inch Acer C7 Chromebook features an Intel Celeron 847 processor, 2GB of DDR3 memory, a 320GB hard drive, three USB 2.0 ports and an HDMI port for various cords and auxiliary devices. It's designed for portability, weighing 3.05 pounds and measuring an inch thick. Boot time is reportedly less than 18 seconds. If the new Chromebook has a weakness, it's the advertised 3.5 hours of battery life. That's less than the MacBook Air (which features anywhere from 5-7 hours' battery life, depending on specs) and many of the Windows-backed Ultrabooks, some of which claim up to 11 hours of battery life depending on usage. It's also far less than the posted battery life for tablets such as Apple's iPad and Google's Nexus 7, which are widely viewed as the most prominent competition to laptops in the extra-portable category."

Re:320GB hard drive

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

A subset of the full features are supported offline [google.com]. I don't know if the 320GB is actually anywhere near filled in common usage scenarios, or whether that's just the sweet spot for spinny disks these days; but going offline doesn't brick the thing.

Comparing like for like?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the new Chromebook has a weakness, it's the advertised 3.5 hours of battery life. That's less than the MacBook Air (which features anywhere from 5-7 hours' battery life, depending on specs) and many of the Windows-backed Ultrabooks, some of which claim up to 11 hours of battery life depending on usage.

You are comparing a $200 machine to one that starts at $1000. It's obviously not going to have the same spec. I'd rather have the $800 and slightly less battery life.

The processor does seem weak, but it is a $200 machine that's only going to be used for light tasks.

If these are the only real-world "weaknesses", it seems like great value, especially if you can put Linux on it.

Re:Google, why?

[DragonWriter]

Chrome needs to be dumped on its ass and the best bits folded into Android. These two operating systems have so much overlap that it makes no sense to keep them both going.

Android is the current, and well-establish Google operating system for mobile phones and tablets, which is the #1 OS in that area. ChromeOS is the far less mature and established OS that represents Google's long-term OS goal, but whose current incarnations are more focussed on traditional keyboard-and-pointing-device type of environments than touch devices. It doesn't make sense to disrupt Android by forcing it to take on ChromeOS's role as well as its own, and it doesn't make sense to hold ChromeOS back by forcing it to take on Android's role. Chrome browser on Android is already the tool for bringing the parts of ChromeOS that work well with Android to Android (just as Chrome browser on Windows, MacOS, and Linux serves as the vehicle for those platforms.) Google's long-term goal -- that they've stated many times -- is to converge Android and ChromeOS. But they have pretty good reasons not to be in a hurry to do that.

Don't like 3.5 hours? Buy TWO to get 7 hours

[daboochmeister]

And still save a LOT compared to the Macbook Air (like, $600). Heck, buy FIVE.

that's my tongue-in-cheek way of pointing out that they have different target audiences ... I highly highly doubt there are many people out there just struggling with the "Oh, I WANT to buy an Acer Chromebook, but that battery means I guess I have to buy a Macbook Air instead" thought process.