Wednesday, October 09, 2013

HP and Google - a $280 Chromebook, that looks like a repackage of the Samsung $250 Chromebook. How will that sell?

Reporting, here, here and here. Pre-Order one here.

I passed on the Samsung. Many did. Why pay more for more of the same? It will be interesting to see the price drop, or the items selling off the shelf and in perpetual back-order through the holidays.

I have no idea what volume it will generate. It is interesting as a marketing study.

Put in 4gig memory and 32gig ssd and a smart card slot, and price that at $280. It would be worth popping that small amount for something not crippled out of the box. Toy time. I think the Chromebook concept is one that could sell. It interests me more than an iPhone where I can do a todo list, and text, and link to a TV. But saying it tops an iPhone, that's faint praise ...

Apple people are a cult.

____________UPDATE____________
Since this post, two new low-end Chromebooks [under $300] have been announced. E.g., this link. HP and Acer are players in the desktop-notebook market for years. A Samsung ARM chip powers the HP item, an Intel latest-architecture chip in the Acer. The Acer comes with 4gig RAM, and has a smart card slot (Amazon, here). Getting the Christmas toys out the door before Halloween. Good for them. With 4gig experimenting with loading Linux on the thing is more exciting, and if you buy you can Google about that if it's your wish. Something like this might work:

Google = chromebook linux crouton