Here Come the Chromebooks, As Google and Intel Cozy-Up On Haswell

MojoKid writes "News from Intel (and Google) today includes an announcement that more Chromebooks are on their way to market packing Intel's Haswell processors. The new chips are designed to consume less power, thus preserving battery life for an all-day charge, while still offering better overall performance. Google notes that there are schools in over 20% of school districts across the country that now use Chromebooks, and with prices for some of the machines dipping as low as $199, deploying fleets of these machines in academia is an attractive option. What's interesting is the alignment between Intel and Google now, which should cause folks in Redmond to smart a bit, as yet another major competitor to the Windows operating system seems to clearly be coming into focus. Intel-Google partners including Acer, ASUS, HP, and Toshiba will be rolling out Chromebooks based on Haswell soon, and they'll collectively be sporting more variety of form factors."

Comments

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Could always just replace it with a full blown Linux distro. Problem solved.

Re:Windows competitor

[gstoddart]

Chome OS is competition to Windows in the same way a bicycle is competition to an automobile.

And if what most people need is a bicycle, and a Chromebook covers their needs it's a competitor. If people buy these instead of something from Microsoft, it is definitely a competitor.

It may not be as general purpose as Windows, but it might show people they don't really need Windows. And that should at least worry Microsoft.