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HP Adds a Touchscreen To Its 11-inch Chromebook Lineup
An anonymous reader shares a report by The Verge:HP today announced the Chromebook 11 G5, the first of the company's Chrome OS laptops in the 11-inch range to include a touchscreen display. The new Chromebook starts at $189 and will go on sale through HP's channel partners in July. It will be more widely available in stores this October. The base model of the Chromebook 11 G5 has a 11.6-inch screen with a sub-HD display (there will be an option for an HD IPS touchscreen panel with Gorilla Glass), weighs 2.51 pounds, and comes with a 1.6gHz Intel Celeron N3060 -- a somewhat common processor for low- to mid-range Chromebooks. HP claims it will be powerful enough to handle video calls and playback, and that it "speeds through spreadsheets," which is the most amazingly modest goal I can imagine for a Chromebook. Of course that limited performance, coupled with Chrome OS's limited feature set, gives the Chromebook 11 G5 up to 11 solid hours of battery life, according to HP.
As a technology director who finished their first year with 1:1 Chromebooks, let me share a few thoughts on touchscreens:
1) They just don't fit with the OS... Chrome wasn't designed as a touch OS. The icons & screen objects are too small. Websites render pages as full-size HTML pages, not mobile-designed pages, so text and links aren't large enough to tap in an easy way. You can flick, you can scroll, you can tap, yes. But do you need to? Only as much as you need to on a Windows 7 OS, i.e. not so much.
2) Screens are more costly to repair... Our districts has New Dell Chromebook 3120's. The touchscreen Chromebooks cost about $85 more. Replacing a broken touchscreen costs $65 more than its counterpart. Is that worth the ability to flick, scroll, and tap? Our district decided it was not.
3) Chromebooks are not getting any faster... Last year, the average 11" Chromebook shipped with an Intel Celeron N2830, clocked at 2.16GHz w/ a 7.5W TDP. This year's models (for those who have released a new model) ship with the N3050, clocked at 1.6GHz w/ a 6W TDP. The processor benchmarks a few percentage points -lower-. If you'd like a Chromebook, find a model with an Intel quad-core. (Avoid the ARM & Rockchip devices.)
4) Remember that the device will only remain active for five years, at which time Google will discontinue updating the device. So don't buy the year-old devices on discount. You'll only get 4 years of life out of them instead of five, then.