Google will launch its first commercial Chromebook notebook, through OEM partners Acer and Samsung. The Samsung Chromebook will sell at 429$ and includes a 12.1-inch display, solid state drive(SSD), 8 hours battery life, fully sized keyboard, in-built 3G and Wi-Fi, and a cloud-based storage. The Acer Chromebook will sell at 349$ and will include a 11.6-inch display, 6.5 hours battery life, Wi-Fi and 3G.
Chromebooks’ pricing will make them quite attractive to consumers, but Google has bigger plans: It’s offering Chromebooks as a monthly subscription to business and education customers. Included in the Chromebook hardware, the subscription will have a Web-based management console, automatic updates, warranty, support, and hardware lifecycle upgrades. It’s pricing will be at 28$ per month for businesses users and 20$ per monthly for education customers.
With this subscription plan, Google’s support it provides for it’s applications will be the same support it will use for Enterprise clients.
After about three years, Google will renew customers’ hardware with the latest Chromebook, so if a machine fails, customers will get a replacement, and although the Chromebook is inexpensive, pricing is not the main selling point for Chromebooks.
Chromebooks are not meant to be cheap computers. They are meant to offer great computing experience for schools and businesses.
Most companies can switch about 70 percent of their users to Chromebooks today through a combination of Web applications and virtualization. Google on the other hand, is partnering with Citrix and VMware on getting enterprise applications interoperable with Chromebooks, and Google plans to offer specifics on how this will work in due course.
Chromebook is Google’s shot at defining an end-to-end Web-based computing experience: Always connected, long battery life, quick startup and automatic updates and installations. All Chromebook data will be backed up in the cloud, and will also be encrypted. If Chromebooks aren’t your cup of tea you may also be interested in taking a look at some laptops under 300 dollars which can make excellent workstations.