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Will HP's $200 Stream 11 Make People Forget About Chromebooks?
theodp writes With an 11.6" screen, Windows 8.1, and free Office 365 for a year, the $199.99 solid-state HP Stream 11 laptop is positioned to make people think twice about Chromebooks (add $30 for the HP Stream 13). But will it? "The HP Stream 11 is clearly both inexpensive and a great value," writes Paul Thurrott. "At just $200, it's cheap, of course. But it also features a solid-feeling construction, a bright and fun form factor, a surprisingly high-quality typing experience and a wonderful screen. This isn't a bargain bin throwaway. The Stream 11 is something special." The HP Stream Family also includes the HP Stream 7, a $99.99 Windows 8.1 Tablet that includes the Office 365 deal. By the way, at the other end of the price spectrum, HP has introduced the Sprout, which Fast Company calls a bold and weird PC that's bursting at the seams with new ideas, from 3-D scanning to augmented reality. (We mentioned the Sprout a few days ago, too; HP seems to be making some interesting moves lately, looks like they're getting on the smartwatch bandwagon, too.) If you're looking at the Stream as a cheap platform for OSes other than Windows, be cautious: one of the reviews at the Amazon page linked describes trouble getting recent Linux distributions to install.
Well Windows uses 24GB after all the patches, so the solid state storage is only 8GB or so. So that requires you use the 1TB online storage.
So you're actually looking at a $200 + $70 a year to continue the Office 365 + storage you filled up in the first year. $99 a year for the professional version. All your files would be online so you'll have to migrate if you ever want to stop paying.
It's maybe better to buy a Netbook and put OpenOffice on it, it will have a 500GB drive, and you can store your docs and files locally.
Chromebooks are for Google fans, its sort of a poor mans Windows, but with only 32GB of flash and Windows taking most of it, this isn't really a Windows laptop.
..."The HP Stream 11 is clearly both inexpensive and a great value," writes Paul Thurrott....
Now there's an impartial opinion.
Install Ubuntu on it and don't give her the root password. Teach her how to access the web browser, email program, and LibreOffice. Problem solved for 99% of mums.
If so, it might actually be useful.
[boople woople twaddle twaddle, /. says I type too fast.]
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
This $200 Stream has an SD Card slot. For $110 you can expand it to 256 GB if you want. OK, that's overkill for a $200 device, but you get the point. Get a 32GB card for $15 instead.
The problem is the system does not see SD cards as a local disk. ITs not a trivial matter you can handwave away. Some programs wont let you install on removable storage. I own a Dell venue 8 32 GB, i will NEVER buy something with that little main memory ever again. I would like to add i have been managing small OS drives for 10 years, starting with a 74 GB Raptor drive. I prepared for this future of small OS storage, what i didnt prepare for is how long OEMs would rape us on memory and no one is saying anything about it.
Too bad that even with 10 years experience, you cannot figure out if a computer/tablet runs Microsoft Windows or if it runs Android. The Dell Venue 8 runs Android, the HP Stream and the Dell Venue 8 Pro both run Windows 8.
I own an Asus T100TA that also runs windows 8 and when I add a microSD, it shows up a drive D in windows. It looks and works like any other drive in windows. I can install programs on it no problem.
However, the Venue 8 is an android machine and with the newer versions of android, Google has really restricted what can be stored on an external microSD card and what each program can access on them. You're talking about restrictions on an Android platform and applying them to a thread about Windows 8 machines. Meh.