Although Acer hasn't announced anything officially, Best Buy is currently listing the 11.6-inch C7 Chromebook with a 16 GB solid state drive (SSD) for $199 USD. Google Play, on the other hand, still shows the C7 Chromebook with a 320 GB 5400 RPM hard drive for the same price. Perhaps this is a Best Buy exclusive? Regardless, reports claim that the retailer's SSD-based version is "coming soon," but a quick check with Best Buy clearly shows that customers can take the $199 plunge now.
The specs also show that the C7 Chromebook includes a built-in HD webcam capable of 1280 x 720 video capture, a built-in analog microphone, 10/100 Ethernet and Wireless N network connectivity, a 4-cell lithium-ion battery, and the Google Chrome OS platform. It weighs only 3.1 pounds and measures just 1.1 inches thin.
Over on Google Play, the Acer C7 Chromebook listing shows it to offer HDMI output, VGA output, stereo internal speakers, headphone and microphone jacks, and Gigabit Ethernet. It also comes packed with 100 GB of Google Drive storage for two years, and 12 free sessions of GoGo Inflight Internet. That said, did Acer reduce the Ethernet aspect to keep the overall cost from rising once the HDD was replaced with an SSD? Or is Best Buy's Ethernet listing just a typo?
Regardless, the Best Buy model will trade in high-capacity storage for speed, meaning that although the Chromebook will be a lot zippier than the HDD-based model, owners will likely rely on external storage devices to house all their files and media. What this SSD-based Chromebook needs is a shot of USB 3.0, but maybe that will arrive in another hardware refresh in the near future.
