Chromebooks

Since Chromebooks first hit the scene, Samsung has had options available. The Samsung Series 3 Chromebook was one of the most popular Chromebooks ever, but in the time since Samsung’s Chromebooks have faded into the background a bit with the focus shifted to options from HP, ASUS, Acer, and many others. With Android apps on the horizon, it seems that Samsung is finally pushing its Chromebook lineup yet again, but it might be doing that in the wrong way…
Following the arrival of Android apps on Chrome OS, new Chromebook models should be coming soon. Among those is a reported addition to Acer’s R lineup with the 13.3-inch Acer R13. While there’s not too much new about this Chromebook, it will reportedly be the first Chrome OS device powered by a chipset from MediaTek.
In this week’s top stories: The next version of Android is officially ‘Nougat’, more Nexus leaks, new Chromebooks, the latest new apps and updates & much more. Head below our handy roundup of links to this these and the rest of this week’s top shared stories.
Announced earlier this year at CES, the Lenovo ThinkPad 13 Chromebook is now available from the company’s online store. With the same design and durability as the Windows version, the Chromebook variant is powered by Intel’s new Skylake processor and will support Android apps later this year.
Coinciding with the announcement of Project Bloks, Google today introduced new updates and improvements to a slew of classroom tools at the ISTE education technology conference. Announcements include public availability of Cardboard Expeditions, Google Cast for Education, quiz support with automatic grading in Google Forms, and new creative apps for Chromebooks.
HP has today launched the latest version of its lower-end Chromebook, the HP Chromebook 11-inch G5. At first glance there might not appear to be anything special about this laptop, but there are a couple of standout features: the laptop offers more than 12 hours of battery life, and there’s also a model that includes a touchscreen (essential for those planning to take advantage of recently-announced Android app support coming to more Chrome OS devices later this year)…
Chrome OS has always been pretty bare bones, but as an avid user and fan of the OS, even I have to admit it’s missing features it really shouldn’t be. With the limited storage available on most Chromebooks, you’d think a storage manager would be available, but you would be wrong. Thankfully, that will be changing very soon.
Keep up with the best gear and deals on the web by signing up for the 9to5Toys Newsletter. Also, be sure to check us out on: Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+ and Safari push notifications.
Despite having been mocked because of its browser-only OS limitation, Chromebooks have seen an astonishing degree of success in certain sectors including education, mostly due to the combination of high efficiency and low costs.
But when MacBook enclaves Apple CEO Tim Cook‘s old high school start making “the switch” to Chromebooks from MacBooks, we take notice…
Announced at Google I/O 2016, Androids apps and the Play Store are now officially on Chromebooks. Chrome OS 53 is rolling out now to all devices in the developer channel, but the Play Store is only showing up on the ASUS Chromebook Flip. Early users are reporting bugs, but reactions are generally positive with performance improvements over Android apps installed via ARC Welder.
Keep up with the best gear and deals on the web by signing up for the 9to5Toys Newsletter. Also, be sure to check us out on: Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+ and Safari push notifications.
Acer has been in the Chromebook world for a while and today their latest offerings have just gone up for sale on the Google Store. The first is another refresh to their popular line of 11.6-inch Chromebooks, the Acer Chromebook 11 (2016), and the second is the Acer Chromebook 14 which sports an all-aluminum build…
Shipments of Chromebooks outpaced Macs in the US for the first time in Q1 2016, that’s according to data from IDC shared during a session at Google’s I/O developer conference today.
We spotted the event description yesterday, but Google today finally took the wraps off its plan to bring the Google Play Store to Chrome OS. While the event is just now starting, we’ve spotted a support page on Google’s site that says the feature is coming to three Chromebooks in mid-June, with dozens more devices to follow…
It looks like there’s a little tidbit of information that might have been originally planned for the keynote (pulled because of time restraints, maybe?). According to a session description now on the Google I/O website, Google “announced” today that the Google Play Store is coming to Chrome…
Today we announced that we’re adding the best mobile app experiences in the world, Android apps and the Google Play store, to the best browser in the world, Chrome! Come to this session and test your Android apps for Chrome OS. You will get hands on help from our friendly engineers on how to optimize your Android app for Chromebooks. Oh, and we will also be giving the first 50 developers to show up a free Chromebook so they can get a head start bringing their apps to Chrome!
This isn’t exactly surprising as we saw evidence that this was in the cards all the way back in April, but it’s cool nonetheless to see it become official. It looks like this session is going to involve Google showing devs how to test their Android apps on the desktop platform. Also worth noting: the first 50 devs to show up will get a free Chromebook.
We’re on the ground at the event now, so stay tuned as we learn more.
In this week’s top Google stories: new Android device news surrounding the Galaxy Note 6, the death of the Nexus 9, Huawei’s upcoming P9 flagship, and more. And we went hands-on with LeEco’s new Snapdragon 820-powered Le Max2 w/ 6GB of RAM, the BlackBerry PRIV running Android Marshmallow, and the Oppo F1 Plus in this week’s top videos.
In addition, HP and Google launched the impressive new Chromebook 13, and a handful of notable Google and Android app updates arrived as well as news of a completely overhauled design for Instagram in testing.
Head below for all of the quick links to this weeks top stories, videos and more.
A short while ago, Google and HP announced a brand new metal-clad Chromebook which boasted some impressive specs, including the powerful, efficient Core M chips from Intel, high resolution screens, generous RAM and more than one Type-C port. In a lot of ways, this is the more affordable laptop the Pixel should have been, and will give the Dell Chromebook 13 a run for its money. But how does it compare to the other Core M laptop; Apple’s latest 12-inch MacBook?
Albeit not being full-fledged PCs, Chromebooks are becoming increasingly interesting machines for a lot of people, given that the extremely simple and lightweight Chrome OS generally leads in reliability, ease of use and usually highly affordable prices.
However, a few of these computers have stood out for things like higher-end specs and interesting industrial designs — namely Google‘s own Pixels — and it looks like HP may have found a really sweet spot with today’s announcement. Partnering with the Mountain View company, the two are today unveiling the Chromebook 13, an all-metal machine with truly impressive specs and price…
Keep up with the best gear and deals on the web by signing up for the 9to5Toys Newsletter. Also, be sure to check us out on: Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+ and Safari push notifications.
Remix OS has gained some traction as a powerful desktop OS that runs Android apps and has some good interface ideas. Chinese manufacturer Allwinner is now looking to use Remix OS to power a very affordable Chromebook-like laptop.
As a follow-up to the Chromebook 14 announced last month, Acer announced the Chromebook 14 for Work this morning. The rugged Chromebook is meant for businesses, features a spill-resistant keyboard, and has been tested to military standards.
Expansys offers the Google Chromebook Pixel (i5-3427U) 1.8GHz/4GB/32GB for $399.99 shipped. That’s about $600 less than the Google Store currently charges and the lowest we can find for one. It has a 3rd Gen Intel Core i5-3427U processor with dual-core and a 1.8GHz processor speed. It also has 4GB DDR3 memory and offers a 32GB solid state drive with fast read/write times. You also get 1TB of Google Drive cloud storage for 1 year (that’s a $120 value!) Rated 4.2/5 stars from 31 Amazon shoppers.
Chinese manufacturer Haier is most known for selling an affordable $149 Chromebook last year. Announced at Intel’s IDF conference (via Notebook Italia), the company is following up with a convertible Chromebook HR-116C that runs Intel’s latest Braswell chip.
Keep up with the best gear and deals on the web by signing up for the 9to5Toys Newsletter. Also, be sure to check us out on: Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+ and Safari push notifications.