There are currently three primary Chromebooks on the market: Samsung’s ARM-powered device, Acer’s $199 Intel x86-based (Celeron 847) laptop and Acer’s $300 C710-2605 which apparently rolled out earlier today.
The $300 C7 is basically an upgraded version of the $200 iteration, with a longer-lasting battery (6 hours instead of 3.5), 4GB of RAM vs. 2GB and a 500GB hard drive instead of 320GB.
Like its $199 predecessor, additional specs include 802.11b/g/n WiFi, a HD 1.3MP webcam, 11.6-inch HD Widescreen CineCrystal LED-backlit LCD, a 2MB L3 cache, three USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, as well as an SD and MMC card reader.
Personally, I’m quite satisfied with my $250 ARM-powered Samsung Chromebook, which features an 11.6 inch display, 802.11n/WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, a USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 port, HDMI output, a VGA camera, 16GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, 10 second boot time and instant resume from sleep.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure one needs to splash out the extra $100 on the new Asus Chromebook unless they are planning on running multiple operating systems like Ubuntu Linux which is significantly less cloud-centric than Chrome.
