Not surprisingly, Google announced a few days ago that it was lowering the price of the Chromebook to just $300. It’s not exactly the HP Touchpad fire sale, but nonetheless it looks like we’re on a countdown to the end of the Chromebook.
The Chromebook is designed as the personal cloud computing device, the ‘breakthrough’ was the thin-client notebook PC, which is always online, with no applications software except the browser installed and no local storage of data. Running the browser-based Chrome operating system, Google has two partners, Acer and Samsung, making the devices, but they haven’t sold in numbers since the product launch in May.
Beginning this week Acer and Samsung Chromebooks dropped in price, so the base model is now $299, down from $350. This is still expensive for what is essentially a cut-down laptop, particularly when you can run the Chrome web browser on almost any hardware, with all your programs, data and media, without the expense of a tenuous roaming internet connection.
Show your friends and colleagues a Chromebook, the first thing that happens is they point out all the things it can’t do.
If the Chromebook suffers poor Christmas sales, you can only see Acer and Samsung dropping it (unless Google subsidises them to keep going).
To quote Windows Supersite editor Paul Thurott, “Post-PC world, indeed.” AJS
Chromebook pricedrop? What else could it mean? Acer, Samsung can’t stay in this for long now. Google too quick to kill projects. I give it three months than the chop.
Posted by Nevers | January 5, 2012, 9:59 pmExcellent post. I was unsure to get one or not.
Posted by Datson | January 8, 2012, 8:41 pm