Continuing the general trend of assault on traditional PCs, Google announced this week the arrival of the first Chromebook.
The new Web-centric PCs, made by Samsung and Acer, are being touted as PCs for people who don't like PCs. Doing away with everything but the browser, the Chromebook may be quite a shock to the traditional tech system.
Acer's Chromebook, at $349, will have an 11.6-inch display and up to six hours of battery life. Samsung's version, selling for $429 to $499, will have a 12.1-inch screen and up to 8.5 hours of battery life.
For that price, analysts say the Chromebooks will have their work cut out for them, due to the fact that tablets and 11- to 12-inch laptops and netbooks have already occupied the same market space.
Both Chromebook models have keyboards, but no hard-drives for storage, and the Chrome Web browser is at the core of the device.
“The Web is on just about every computing device made, from phones to TVs, and has the broadest reach of any platform,” says the official Google blog.
“With HTML5 and other open standards, Web applications will soon be able to do anything traditional applications can do, and more.”
Heading to the cloud
There are currently over 160 million active users of Chrome, and according to Google, Chromebooks provide all of Chrome's speed, simplicity and security, without the headaches of operating systems designed 20 to 30 years ago.
Since the bare-bones operating system is essentially the browser, users are steered towards using applications like e-mail and spreadsheets directly on the Web rather than storing software like word processors.
Chromebooks are said to provide access to the Web in seven seconds, and analysts say the Chrome OS may pose a serious threat to the dominance of Microsoft's Windows.
Google has plans to offer the Chromebooks on a three-year subscription to businesses and schools in the US. For a monthly cost of $28 per user in businesses and government agencies and $20 per user in schools, Google will provide the laptop, tech support and a warranty for the duration, and will replace the devices at the end of the subscription period.
This subscription model is what some believe could possibly put pressure on Microsoft's enterprise licensing revenue.
Stripped down laptop?
There is, however, a common sentiment that keeps recurring among analysts and the average person in the street: the Chromebooks are the same size as laptops and have a similar price, yet they have stripped down functionality.
With this in mind, it may take a while for Google to convince the mass market to trade the functionality of a laptop or tablet for a device that can only run a Web browser and Web-based applications.
Google has, however, announced that some applications will be given offline-functionality. These offline capabilities are expected to increase the appeal of Chrome OS to business.
The new Chrome file manager and media player, as well as Gmail, Google Apps and Calendar, are some of the applications that will be available offline. The devices are, however, set to be released before this functionality is available.
Marketing, not manufacturing
Netbooks have largely failed in the market, and this has been said to be an illustration of the fact that consumers will not buy devices with reduced functionality, simply because they are cheap.
The iPad found its niche through successfully marketing itself not as a limited laptop, without a keyboard, but rather as something completely new and different.
The physical appearance of the Chromebooks will make it difficult for Google to market them as anything other than stripped-down laptops.
The Chromebooks are set to go on sale in the US and Europe in June, and more countries will follow in the coming months, according to Google.
The limitations of Web-based applications when it comes to media production and consumption also loom large when considered against the issues surrounding bandwidth access - especially in the South African context.
But, if Google's belief that people are generally tired of the “hassles” associated with traditional PCs proves correct, the Chromebooks may yet stand to win-over a considerable number of fans.
* Would you buy a Chromebook? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.