Acer Introduces Premium Variant of its C7 Chromebook

[btarunr]

Acer announced a premium variant of its 11.6-inch C7 Chromebook (model: C710-2605). While the original, which launched last month, features a catchy $199 price-tag, the new C710-2605 costs 50% more, at $299. In return, you get double the RAM, at 4 GB, a larger 500 GB hard drive, and double the battery capacity at 5,000 mAh. Everything else remains the same. The 11.6-inch Chromebook is driven by Intel Celeron 1.10 GHz processor, and features WLAN, GbE, USB 2.0/1.1, and HDMI in addition to D-Sub.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[TheGuruStud]

Oh, yay, junk hardware at real hardware prices.

When are netbooks going to die?

 

[Frick]

Oh, yay, junk hardware at real hardware prices.

When are netbooks going to die?

Why is it junk hardware, and what is "real hardware" and this has a pretty good price. And do not come dragging with those dirt cheap HP 15.6 inch laptops. Different form factor, different crowd, different everything. I love netbooks, in fact I'm using the one in sig right now, and it works surprisingly well for having even "junkier" hardware compared to the Chromebook.

 

[TheGuruStud]

Why is it junk hardware, and what is "real hardware" and this has a pretty good price. And do not come dragging with those dirt cheap HP 15.6 inch laptops. Different form factor, different crowd, different everything. I love netbooks, in fact I'm using the one in sig right now, and it works surprisingly well for having even "junkier" hardware compared to the Chromebook.

B/c they're practically unusable. I'm not waiting all day to open an app or install one (and then I can't even see it)

The netbook market collapsed for a reason. People found out it's obsolete performance in a package to small to do anything.

I'm sure the chromebook is responsive for what it does (nothing), but paying asinine prices for hardware that makes 5 yr old stuff look fast isn't inspiring.

 

[Frick]

B/c they're practically unusable. I'm not waiting all day to open an app or install one (and then I can't even see it)

The netbook market collapsed for a reason. People found out it's obsolete performance in a package to small to do anything.

I'm sure the chromebook is responsive for what it does (nothing), but paying asinine prices for hardware that makes 5 yr old stuff look fast isn't inspiring.

Then you are using them wrong. The bigger problem is of course windows, but install something light linuxy and they become other machines entirely. I've been using the netbook I have in sig (Acer Aspire One, one of the slower ones) and with Lubuntu it works great. I even consider it snappy (apart from the software center)! On the other hand I balance the workload, you have to realize you can't do what you can on a high powered i7 desktop machine. That is not realistic. But for writing, light in bed/on trains browsing and the such it works great. I usually hook it up to a monitor and design circuits with it.

And now when we're getting more and more performance from the same thermal envelope .. only good things lies ahead. My sister has a Lenovo Thinkpad E135 and I was quite impressed with it. I don't think netbooks will go away because the form factor is great for people who travel a lot and type a lot while traveling. The magic middle ground is of course a tablet with keyboard, or a hybrid, but the good ones are more than twice the price of the Thinkpad mentioned earlier, and while tablets are nice and all you still have to shell out more if you want a good (if not great) keyboard.

I always loved the concept of netbooks but thought they were marketed a bit strange.. "IT'S TINY COMPUTER", so loads of people bought one and noticed it wasn't the same thing as their high end desktop they have at home. But now, with the aforementioned progress in low power chips, it can only be better.

And looking at CPUbenchmark.net it's about the same as Core 2 Duo mobile chips, which might sound horrible, but it's more performance than most people need and perfect for the form factor. And they're cheap.

All in all you have to look at the entire picture, not just stare blindly at performance.