Keen eyes have spotted a new notebook from Hewlett Packard (HP) that packs an AMD Mullins processor and Microsoft’s 64-bit Windows 8.1 with Bing. This version of Windows is offered to device makers for a discounted licensing fee, a savings which in turn can be seen in the final list price. Consumers aren’t required to stick with Internet Explorer and Bing, but OEMs are not allowed to make any changes to the search option before the units are shipped.
The Mullins laptop/netbook in question is the HP Pavilion 10z, which features AMD’s E1 Micro-6200T APU. This is one of the slower APUs that AMD introduced last November, packing two cores clocked at 1.4 GHz and Radeon R2 graphics. The low-power chip was designed for low-cost tablets and notebooks, such as the Pavilion 10z.
The device has a 10.1-inch touchscreen with a 1366 x 768 resolution, and a front-facing VGA webcam that has an integrated digital microphone. This screen is backed by 2 GB of DDR3L memory, a 500 GB 5400 RPM hard drive, and a small, 3-cell 24Whr Lithium-ion battery promising up to 4 hours on a single charge.
This notebook (or tablet with a permanent keyboard) doesn’t provide an optical drive, but does include a 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet jack for wired networking, and possibly Wireless N connectivity (Miracast compatible). The ports include an SD card reader, one USB 3.0 port, one USB 2.0 port, HDMI output and a headphone/microphone combo port. Audio is provided by two speakers.
HP’s new notebook appears to be part of the crowd that’s competing with Chromebooks. For instance, the Acer C720 Chromebook starts at $199 USD, and includes an 11.6-inch screen with a 1366 x 768 resolution. The device is only 0.75 inches thin, packing an Intel Celeron processor, dual-band Wireless N and Bluetooth connectivity, a full size HDMI port, 16 GB of internal storage and more.
HP already has a player in the Chromebook sector: the Chromebook 11. With a starting price of $279 USD, this Chrome OS-based solution provides an 11.6-inch IPS display, an Exynos 5250 GAIA processor, 2 GB of DDR3 RAM, 16 GB of internal storage, a VGA webcam, two USB 2.0 ports and a battery promising up to 6 hours of active use.
For more information about HP’s Windows 8.1-based Pavilion 10z notebook, head here. Pricing starts at $249.99.
Follow Kevin Parrish @exfileme. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.