HP Adds a Touchscreen To Its 11-inch Chromebook Lineup

An anonymous reader shares a report by The Verge:HP today announced the Chromebook 11 G5, the first of the company's Chrome OS laptops in the 11-inch range to include a touchscreen display. The new Chromebook starts at $189 and will go on sale through HP's channel partners in July. It will be more widely available in stores this October. The base model of the Chromebook 11 G5 has a 11.6-inch screen with a sub-HD display (there will be an option for an HD IPS touchscreen panel with Gorilla Glass), weighs 2.51 pounds, and comes with a 1.6gHz Intel Celeron N3060 -- a somewhat common processor for low- to mid-range Chromebooks. HP claims it will be powerful enough to handle video calls and playback, and that it "speeds through spreadsheets," which is the most amazingly modest goal I can imagine for a Chromebook. Of course that limited performance, coupled with Chrome OS's limited feature set, gives the Chromebook 11 G5 up to 11 solid hours of battery life, according to HP.

WTF ?

[GLMDesigns]

Take these articles, I mean ads, outta here.

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[BronsCon]

You call it an ad, I call it entertainment. This is what's considered high-en these days? HA!

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[dknj]

Seriously if you want an ad, check out HP's zbook ultrabook line [hp.com]. A laptop with a xeon proc, 64gb ecc ram, and 2 drive bays. It's a portable server. THAT, my friend, is high-end.

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[BronsCon]

I'll take 2, please.

Speeds through spreadsheets like it's 1983

[Anonymous Coward]

VisiCalc on the KayPro was pretty quick too. So was Lotus 1-2-3 on an XT. XT is a real beast of a machine compared to a KayPro.

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[sensei moreh]

AceCalc on a Franklin Ace 1000 wasn't bad. However, I that machine had a whopping 64K RAM.

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[bobbied]

It's not just the products... It's the customer service after the sale too... (Or it used to be, I've not used them in years after a really bad experience with a product, followed by a bad customer service experience trying to fix the product, followed by me swearing, and then swearing never to use HP again.)

Maybe I'm not being fair with HP and they've turned over a new leaf, but they really messed up enough I'm not ready to tempt fate and try their stuff and support to see.

i do have my eye on a buying a new chromebook

[FudRucker]

possibly by the end of the year, (as soon as android apps are merged) and touchscreen is a big selling point for me, this one looks interesting

Insight on Chromebooks

[Pollux]

As a technology director who finished their first year with 1:1 Chromebooks, let me share a few thoughts on touchscreens:

1) They just don't fit with the OS... Chrome wasn't designed as a touch OS. The icons & screen objects are too small. Websites render pages as full-size HTML pages, not mobile-designed pages, so text and links aren't large enough to tap in an easy way. You can flick, you can scroll, you can tap, yes. But do you need to? Only as much as you need to on a Windows 7 OS, i.e. not so much.

2) Screens are more costly to repair... Our districts has New Dell Chromebook 3120's. The touchscreen Chromebooks cost about $85 more. Replacing a broken touchscreen costs $65 more than its counterpart. Is that worth the ability to flick, scroll, and tap? Our district decided it was not.

3) Chromebooks are not getting any faster... Last year, the average 11" Chromebook shipped with an Intel Celeron N2830, clocked at 2.16GHz w/ a 7.5W TDP. This year's models (for those who have released a new model) ship with the N3050, clocked at 1.6GHz w/ a 6W TDP. The processor benchmarks a few percentage points -lower-. If you'd like a Chromebook, find a model with an Intel quad-core. (Avoid the ARM & Rockchip devices.)

4) Remember that the device will only remain active for five years, at which time Google will discontinue updating the device. So don't buy the year-old devices on discount. You'll only get 4 years of life out of them instead of five, then.

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[sensei moreh]

You can (or could) get an HP Stream 11. Mine has a Celeron N2840 (not significantly faster than the N2830), and, thanks to the SD card (from which it can't boot) dual-boots Windows 10 (upgraded from 8) and Ubuntu 16.10 (development) Mate (boot sector on the internal eMMC)

eMMC... WHY?!

[darrellg1]

other than to block upgrading my HP Stream 11 from 8 to 10 (YAY), its slow as any spindle drive.

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[sensei moreh]

The eMMC isn't for speed. It's the cheapest way to give you just enough storage to hold Windows and a small browser cache.

Slow As Hell

[darkain]

I went to look up that CPU on Passmark to see how it compared to the 10" Acer Aspire One Netbook I'm currently typing this comment on. That Chromebook's CPU has a score of 1054, and my Netbook has a score of 1307. The major differences? My Netbook is now a 4 year old system, plus it packs in 8GB of RAM (added myself), and a significantly larger HDD. Considering this thing also came with Windows 7, it still only cost $300 retail (before upgraded RAM pulled from another machine I had laying around). So, 4 yea

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[NaCh0]

Nothing has changed in the past 4 years if you think $189 is a wise amount to spend on a new laptop. (or that HP is a good brand for such laptop)