CNET Looks at Google’s New Chromebook Pixel Laptop
Over at CNET, Stephen Shankland looks at Google’s just-released Chromebook Pixel, a high-end laptop running the company’s Web-focused Chrome OS. Whereas previous Chromebooks have been sold at the low end of the laptop price spectrum, the Chromebook Pixel costs $1,299 (Wi-Fi) or $1,499 (Wi-Fi plus LTE, for more-widespread connectivity) and boasts a 12.85-inch, 2560-by-1700-pixel touch screen that’s visually comparable to the screen of Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. It’s driven by a dual-core 1.8 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, and features a 32 GB SSD, 4 GB of RAM, two USB ports, a headphone-microphone jack, SD card slot, and Mini DisplayPort for connecting to an external display.
The very economical web-book makes sense to me. But for over one grand, I want a machine which can run real apps and hold the files!
,,, But I have a strong feeling that this machine is not meant to be a hit, or even profitable. It is simply meant to be a prestige machine, it is meant to boost the public perception of the Google Chrome OS. They want it to be thought of as a serious alternative, not as a cheap one.
I think that's a fair characterization - to this point the Chromebooks have been very cheap, and while there's a role for cheap hardware, it's easy to see why Google would want to showcase how Chrome OS would work on a nice machine.