IDF is wrapping up today but the conference has yielded plenty of juicy announcements in the two days it was running. Among those was Google's unveiling of new Chromebook laptops running on Intel's fourth generation Core i-series of CPUs, also known as Haswell. We had heard rumors of Chromebooks running on Haswell ahead of IDF and the show didn't disappoint.
The company said that new Chromebooks from Acer, HP, Toshiba, and Asus would hit the market over the next few months but offered little in the way of real information regarding any of the upcoming models. However, Mountain View already has a splash page for a new model from Acer that boasts an 11.6-inch display, 100 GB of Google Drive storage space, and up to 8.5 hours of battery, but nothing on pricing or availability.
There's also a page for an HP offering dubbed the HP Chromebook 14 (pictured above). It, predictably, has a 14-inch display, 100 GB of Google Drive storage, 9.5 hours of battery, and weighs just over 4 lbs. According to HP, it also has 16 GB of onboard storage, HDMI, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, a 1366 x 768 resolution, optional 4G (with 200MB of free data every month from T-Mobile), and weighs just over 4 lbs. It will be available this holiday shopping season with a $300 price tag.
Google's Chromebook Pixel was the first Chromebook to pack a Core i-series CPU. All other models have been ARM- or Atom-powered solutions. The hope is that Haswell will boost battery life without affecting performance.
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