A $199 laptop that runs Google's Chrome OS was introduced Monday by Acer, making it the same price as several tablets, such as Google's own Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire HD. The Acer C7 laptop has an 11.6-inch screen. It goes on sale Tuesday, available from the Google Play store, at Best Buy stores and on BestBuy.com.
As with another recently announced Chromebook, from Samsung for $249, it's probably more of a second or third computer. If you're a heavy user of programs like Gmail and Google Docs, and primarily want a computer for Web browsing, the Chromebooks could do the trick.
Among the chief differences between Samsung's and Acer's Chromebooks, aside from price, are weight and battery life. The Samsung Chromebook weighs 2.4 pounds and has a battery life of 6.5 hours. The Acer C7 Chromebook weighs 3 pounds and has a battery life of 3.5 hours.
It has an Intel Celeron 847 processor, 2GB of memory and a 320GB HDD for storing files. It comes with three USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port for video; a card reader that supports SD and MMC cards.
A nice add-on is that it includes 12 free sessions of Gogo Inflight Internet, which can cost $14 a day to use.
For more information, visit Google's Chrome Devices page here.
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