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New HP Laptop Would Mean Windows at Chromebook Prices
New submitter nrjperera (2669521) submits news of a new laptop from HP that's in Chromebook (or, a few years ago, "netbook") territory, price-wise, but loaded with Windows 8.1 instead. Microsoft has teamed up with HP to make an affordable Windows laptop to beat Google Chromebooks at their own game. German website Mobile Geeks have found some leaked information about this upcoming HP laptop dubbed Stream 14, including its specifications. According to the leaked data sheet the HP Stream 14 laptop will share similar specs to HP's cheap Chromebook. It will be shipped with an AMD A4 Micro processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of flash storage and a display with 1,366 x 768 screen resolution. Microsoft will likely offer 100GB of OneDrive cloud storage with the device to balance the limited storage option.
And that game is Calvin Ball.
But will it run Linux??
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
loaded with Windows 8.1
Is that even enough for Windows 8.1? And I don't mean enough as in bare minimum to run the OS, I mean enough to actually run more than four applications and a browser with at least ten tabs opened.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I think Microsoft gives manufacturers a discount if they limit their ram to 2 GB.
They are really shooting themselves in the foot, because a web browser can easily use 2 GB by itself, bringing the computer to a crawl.
Seriously.. my cell phone has 2 GB of ram.... This laptop will be nearly unusable without more memory.
This is as counterproductive as outlet stores. Sure, you pay a little less but the clothes shrink or fall apart.
And there on my ruined clothes it says Gap or Banana Republic - 2 brands I've bought lots of stuff from before, and will never ever buy again. But they made a little money, and I 'saved' a little money.
This laptop is the outlet mall version of an HP laptop - itself a brand that doesn't exactly exude quality these days..
the cost of virus and malware scan software, monthly cost of Office whatever and the RAM the previous additions sucked up. Think I will pass.
I bought my Lenovo Mix (8" tablet) with full Windows 8.1, 4GB RAM and Office 2013 Home for just $200. I added a nice bluetooth keyboard and case for another $60 and now it's my primary "walking around the company campus attending meetings" device (replacing a laptop). $260 was already in the ballpark of my son's Nexus 7 table.
I hope Microsoft (and HP and all the interchangeable PC providers) keep this up - if Apple's not going to drop price it helps consumers to have another company with deep pockets engaged in the tablet price war.
Here's the thing. Part of the problem is that they're not really beating Chromebook on anything, just matching the price. I still am going to need to load an anti-virus program, still going to have to sit through a long startup, and still have to sit through Update Tuesday. Yeah, I know Chromebook isn't perfect, but for most of what I do, it's really good enough and with my Macbook covering the 10% of things I can't do with my Chromebook, I'm really not seeing the need for Windows at all. Office? Please. I've been using OpenOffice and/or Google Docs for the past 4 years and no one has even noticed a difference so long as I save to .doc format.
I picked up an Acer C720 about a year ago that was good enough that I don't even carry around the Mac Air that my company gave me. 2GB RAM, Celeron 2955U haswell processor, 8-9 hour battery life, hdmi/USB3, SD slot, 16GB storage, same video resolution as the HP above. All for US$199 and in a 2lb package.
I thought I'd need more storage, but it's a year later and I haven't used more than about 10GB of the internal storage. One of these days, I'll upgrade it to 32GB or 64GB, but I've just been storing my personal files on either a 64GB SD card or 64GB USB 3.0 fob.
Having something this thinly provisioned running the bloat that is Win 8.1 wouldn't be attractive for me at all, regardless of the price point. However, it's great for ChromeOS and Ubuntu Trusty.
If they can make their 2015 machine cold boot in under four seconds, and come up from suspend in under one second, it'll be almost as good as a 2013-2014 Chromebook. Here's to hoping Microsoft can catch up.
One of the things Microsoft did right with Windows 8.x is reduce the memory it uses. So much so that it only actually needs up to 360mb of memory to run the OS while in desktop mode. That is up to, that is not at least. In this case the OS will definitely NOT be getting in your way. Actually, I've found Windows 8.1 is better to use on low end hardware as they have also reduced CPU use and optimized the start-up time.
2GB is enough for basic Windows use with running multiple programs. Of course depending on what programs you are using. I have a netbook that isn't officially supported by Windows 8. It went from 80 seconds start time in Windows 7 to 20 seconds in Windows 8. Programs launch and respond better now with the Windows 8. While there are many, many things wrong with Windows 8, it works extremely well on low end hardware.
Don't get me wrong, I hate Windows 8.1. Metro sucks, they messed up the configuration by having it spread all over the place. They broke multiple programs. On my last main machine it slowed down my boot time from 60 seconds to 90 seconds, though some of those problems were because I upgraded instead of fresh installed. The upgrade process is broken, it will upgrade you, but may forget to install critical OS files and will offer no way for you to fix it without reinstalling. Windows 8.1 feels like Windows Vista. They messed up the little things, which is what they got right in Windows 7 and is really important in your day to day usage. On my new main computer, old one the SATA controller failed, I upgraded to Windows 7, but my netbook, I wouldn't want to go back to Windows 7 on.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
They're still incredibly useful... it's just that people stopped buying them because Intel stopped making Atom processors faster/more powerful to choke the life out of the 0% profit margin netbook segment... only to have them revived as "Chromebooks" and are again eating up Microsoft and Intel's bottom line. The only reason Netbooks aren't trendy is because Google wasn't a market disruptor when Wintel made the decision to stop updating Netbook hardware. Now Google is.
moox. for a new generation.
Um what? I count 328 laptops under $250, just including laptops running Windows 8 and Windows 7. There's a $229.00 ASUS laptop literally right there on the front page of Newegg right now.
My 2012 Surface Pro "Cold Boots" in 2 seconds. Flash Drive. My 2010 netbook boots in 20 seconds. 5400rpm hard drive. A lot of the boot process is dependent on the hard drive, so a low end 2015, should probably boot as fast as a higher end 2012 machine. I put "Cold Boots" in parenthesis because Windows 8.1 almost never really cold boots. It uses a form of hibernate where it figures out what is exactly the same each boot time and stores an image of that on the hard drive, then just loads it into memory. That combined with UEFI makes Windows 8.1 boot really fast on new hardware, even if it is low end.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Actually, I've found Windows 8.1 is better to use on low end hardware
So long as the hardware is new enough to support Windows 8.1. AMD CPUs prior to Athlon 64 and Intel CPUs prior to Pentium 4 Prescott cannot run Windows 8.1 because they lack SSE2 or lack the NX bit.
If this device is anything like the dell venue pro with 32GB, it works out to something like 17GB usable when you turn the device on, but by the time windows update runs its going to be less than 10GB free.
Lots of discussion about this on the internet, for example:
http://en.community.dell.com/s...
And in the laptop world, a cheap laptop isn't going to have squat for expandability anyway
A laptop running Windows or GNU/Linux can use external flash drives, hard drives, optical drives, printers, flatbed scanners, cameras, keyboards, mice, Wacom tablets, joysticks, sound cards, TV tuners, and whatever else you can plug into a USB hub. Plus a second display plugged into the VGA or HDMI output. Chromebooks can't even print while the Internet is down, such as after you've used up all the monthly GB for which you've paid your ISP. And a lot of games work on Windows and GNU/Linux but haven't been taken in JavaScript for Chrome OS.
That's interesting. Last year Microsoft bragged that they'd reduced its boot time to 8.5.