There’s been no shortage of doubters about the whole Chromebook concept, but the platform’s market share has been growing steadily over the past year or so, with consumers, schools and businesses warming to the low price and ease of use.
Keen to keep up the pressure, Google has just announced a new line up of Chromebook models, all powered by Intel’s Haswell processor – which is both powerful and efficient on battery life – and all running the Chrome OS, of course.
The HP Chromebook14 packs a large 14 inch screen with a 1366 x 768 resolution and comes in a variety of colours, and is priced at just £249.
The machine comes HDMI, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports alongside an SD card reader, HD webcam and headphone and microphone jacks, with a 16GB SSD drive available for local storage.
HP’s Chromebook 14 is slated as being availabler to buy in November from select UK retailers,
There’s also a smaller Toshiba Chromebook looking to appeal to the travelling-light set while the ASUS Chromebox provides PC power in a bijou package.
Six of the top laptop manufacturers are now offering Chromebooks, with Google adding, “Over the coming months, you’ll see Chromebooks from multiple device manufacturers. These include newly designed Chromebooks from Acer and HP, as well as new entrants ASUS and Toshiba.”
The company added:
“Research firm NPD says Chromebooks represent 20-25% of the $300-or-less computer segment. In education, more than 5,000 schools have deployed Chromebooks for their students, representing more than 20% of school districts in the U.S.
“Intel, who has been with us on this journey from day one, unveiled a new lineup of Chromebooks today based on the Haswell micro-architecture in San Francisco. Intel’s latest processors sip less power to improve battery life by more than 2 times over previous generations, while offering increased performance. This means these new Chromebooks last almost all day so you can focus on getting things done.”
As you mentioned, Google faced a lot of skepticism when they first released the Chromebook, and I give them credit for sticking with it. As Google and its hardware partners continue to improve the Chromebook, more consumers and even organizations will begin to view it as a viable computing option.
But even with all the improvements, some organizations might still be held back from considering Chromebooks because they still need access to Windows applications. Besides MS Office applications, there are many other applications (even in-house ones) that aren’t cloud-enabled or replaceable with Google Apps.
One way around this is to leverage HTML5 technology that allows for browser-based access to applications. For example, Ericom’s AccessNow HTML5 RDP client allows Chromebook users to connect to Windows applications running on Terminal Server or VDI virtual desktops, and run those applications or even full desktops in a browser tab.
There’s nothing to install on the Chromebook (the HTML5 browser is already there), which makes life easy for IT staff. You just click on a URL, enter your login credentials and your Windows application or desktop appears in the browser.
For an online, interactive demo, go to Ericom .com