Google Wants to Be Part of Your Meetings With Chromebox
HP plans to launch a Chromebox this spring.
Hewlett Packard's Shelia Watson updated the company's The Next Bench Blog on Thursday with news of an upcoming HP Chromebox. There will actually be two when they arrive this spring, one that sports an Intel "Haswell" processor and one for more demanding applications that has an Intel i7 "Haswell" processor.
"It works with standard keyboards, mice and displays, and offers connectivity using HDMI, DisplayPort and Bluetooth, along with four USB 3.0 ports. Like other Chrome devices from HP, the Chromebox offers a fast, easy and safe computing experience for you and your family," Watson writes.
Unfortunately, Watson doesn't provide any specific specs, and the notification page merely reveals Chromeboxes in four different colors: Smoke Silver, Ocean Turquoise, Snow White and Twinkle Black. She notes that some of these colors were used on the Chromebook 14 introduced a few months ago.
"You can securely mount the Chromebox to your wall or to the back of your monitor using standard VESA mounts. This petite little package can also snugly fit into your home theater, and it's small enough to pop into a travel bag (in case you wanted to set up shop while on vacation)," Watson adds.
Meanwhile, over on Google, the search engine giant has introduced a Chromebox bundle of its own, bringing together Google+ Hangouts and Google Apps in an easy-to-manage solution. The Chromebox is part of a $999 kit for meetings, which also includes an HD camera, a remote control and a microphone/speaker.
The Chromebox in this bundle is actually one of several Asus revealed just days ago. Specs show that it has an Intel Core i7-4600U processor, either 2 GB or 4 GB of DDR3-1600 MHz memory (two SO-DIMM slots), a 16 GB SSD, a 2-in-1 SD card reader, Wireless N connectivity and more.
According to the company, the remote control has a full QWERTY keyboard on the back, a nano-sized USB adapter, and RF connectivity (no line of sight necessary). The camera can capture video up to 1920 x 1080, and will automatically switch resolution based on available bandwidth.
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"For the same price that companies have typically paid for one meeting room, they'll be able to outfit 10 rooms—or more. CDW and SYNNEX will help bring Chromebox for meetings to customers and resellers, and Chromeboxes from HP and Dell will be available for meetings in the coming months," reads Google's blog.
Later this year, Google plans to launch the Chromebox for meetings in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, New Zealand, Spain and the U.K.
For more information about Chromebox for meetings, head here.
Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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sunflier "<b>Google Wants to Be Part of Your <s>Meetings,</s> personal Life, shopping preferences, email, visited websites, medical records., etc., With Chromebox, Google, Google+, Google Glass, etc,.</b>".../fixedReply -
C 64 Google wants to spy on your work meetings, because they know everything about your "private" live allready.Reply -
stevejnb Make all the snarky comments you want, Google is giving many, many people something that their spending habits prove they want. What is that? A means of funding technology that isn't forking over money to them directly out of your wallet. You don't like what they're doing? Vote with your wallet - don't buy their products. The fact is though, many, many people are voting for Google with their wallets and their choices of software/services, and you cannot level the criticism at Google that the are not giving the public what it wants. Yes, a lot of the fault here lies on a hypocritical public that loves to support a company's practices and bash them simultaneously.Reply
Also, if your fingers are just trembling to bash Google and you have an Android phone, a Chromebook, use Google maps, Gmail, Google docs, YouTube, etch etc... Well, welcome to being part of what you think is the problem, hypocrite. There are alternatives that don't follow Google's business practices and they are getting whipped by Google - because people, like you, don't use them. -
KALLO I bet that 70 % of Android users don't even know that their phone has any relations to Google. They were just buying Samsung, Sony, Huawei etc. It's pretty harsh to blame someone being a hypocrite who in reality is just ignorant instead. Or totally oblivious.Reply -
stevejnb Let's put it this way... When my audience is a tech forum I'm not too worried about people not knowing that Android is from Google. What's more, when someone pays enough attention to technology news to know that Google is associated with all sorts of privacy issues, I'm betting they know that Google makes Android.Reply
And frankly, it's harsh, but it's also harsh to paint Google out to be the devil for data mining for the purpose of advertising, ESPECIALLY when you agreed to an EULA that quite clearly states that this is what they do. -
teh_chem ReplyI bet that 70 % of Android users don't even know that their phone has any relations to Google. They were just buying Samsung, Sony, Huawei etc. It's pretty harsh to blame someone being a hypocrite who in reality is just ignorant instead. Or totally oblivious.
Arbitrary, made-up statistics FTW. :/