Chromebooks seem to be multiplying. Just last week, we heard a rumor about an upcoming Lenovo Chromebook for schools. Now, a PDF product brochure unearthed by SlashGear suggests HP also has a Chrome OS-toting laptop up its sleeve.
Dubbed the Pavilion Chromebook 14, the system looks like a cheap, run-of-the-mill Windows laptop, minus the Windows part. It has a 14" 1366×768 display, a 1.1GHz Celeron 847 processor, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, a 16GB solid-state drive, and a 37Wh battery rated for 4.25 hours of run time. At least the thing doesn’t sound too bulky—HP quotes a weight of 3.96 lbs and a maximum thickness of 0.83".
I’m not entirely sure why you’d want a jumbo-sized Chromebook, especially given the paltry 1366×768 display resolution. Acer packs the same pixel count into its 11.6" C7 Chromebook, which is almost a pound lighter and priced at just $199.99. (The C7 has a Celeron 847 and 2GB of memory, too, just like the Pavilion Chromebook 14.) I guess the HP’s bigger screen might be nice for Netflix, but since Chrome OS pretty much only runs web apps, video streaming and downloading options are going to be limited.
Oh, and speaking of Acer… In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Acer President Jim Wong revealed that Chromebooks account for 5-10% of Acer’s U.S. shipments. That doesn’t sound like too bad a start, considering the first system in Acer’s Chromebook lineup started selling in mid-November. For the record, Gartner estimated Acer’s total U.S. PC shipments at 1.38 million units for the fourth quarter of 2012.