Google's Chromebooks Hit Ireland, Canada and More

News
By Jane McEntegart
published

Ireland, Canada, Australia and others join the likes of the UK and U.S. as the Chromebook goes on sale in a host of new countries.

It's been almost two years since the first Chromebooks went on sale and it's sometimes easy to forget that, while we in the States have enjoyed several iterations of Chromebook, other countries haven't seen hide nor hair of the Cloud-computing machines. Today, Google introduced several new countries to the magic of ChromeOS.

Google has announced that starting today, its Acer, HP and Samsung Chromebooks will begin rolling out in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. Not only that, but Google is also rolling out Chromebooks to businesses in schools in the aforementioned countries, which means discounts for those institutions and upgrades for users involved in the programs.

Unfortunately, no word on whether or not Google's newest Chromebook, the Chromebook Pixel, will be launching in the above countries, too. Priced at just under $1,300, the Chromebook Pixel packs 4.3 million pixels into a 12.85-inch 2560 x 1700 display for a PPI of 239. Google boasts that this is the highest pixel density of any laptop on the market today. Display aside, the laptop runs on an Intel Core i5 processor (dual core, clocked to 1.8GHz) with integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000, 4 GB DDR3 RAM 32 GB Solid State Drive with 1TB of free cloud storage (though it's only good for three years), 2 x USB 2.0 ports, HD Webcam, a clickable glass trackpad, a backlit keyboard, dual band WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n 2x2, Bluetooth 3.0 and optional LTE.

In Ireland, pricing for the lower-end Chromebooks will start at €279 and the notebooks will be available through PCWorld and Amazon UK. In Canada, you will soon be able to snap one up at your nearest Best Buy or Futureshop (or you can buy online starting today). Australians can head to JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman while those in France, Germany and the Netherlands can get their Chromebooks atAmazon and Pixmania (France), Notebooksbilliger, Amazon, Cyberport and Saturn (Germany), or mediamarkt.nl, saturn.nl en laptopshop.nl (Netherlands).

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Jane McEntegart
7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Azn Cracker
    Sadly, I have not seen anyone with a chrome book before.
    Reply
  • teh_chem
    Ditto
    Reply
  • RupertJr
    does people buy that crap?
    Reply
  • gofasterstripes
    Using a Samsung one now :) What's crap about it?
    Reply
  • daglesj
    Yep I have one too and its superb.

    Tech guys are scared of them as it's the perfect computer for a LOT of people out there that do 95% of their computing on the web. You can still type up a word doc off line for the other 5%.

    Scared because the device needs next to zero support. No AV, no updates to consciously install. No OS to screw up. Its the perfect mum and dad PC.

    I've been showing mine around to a lot of people and so far four have bought one. Others are very interested.

    It's a great solution to those that are fed up dicking around with Windows/OSX and mainstream desktop Linux. Believe me, there are a lot of them out there.
    Reply
  • ricky_d
    Scared?? No I'm just scared that ms will try to follow that path and screw up my working environment.
    Who actually likes being pc support? If one wants to buy that stuff for $800 go ahead..
    Reply
  • assasin32
    daglesjYep I have one too and its superb.Tech guys are scared of them as it's the perfect computer for a LOT of people out there that do 95% of their computing on the web. You can still type up a word doc off line for the other 5%.Scared because the device needs next to zero support. No AV, no updates to consciously install. No OS to screw up. Its the perfect mum and dad PC.I've been showing mine around to a lot of people and so far four have bought one. Others are very interested.It's a great solution to those that are fed up dicking around with Windows/OSX and mainstream desktop Linux. Believe me, there are a lot of them out there.
    I own one as well and love it. I am quite surprised everytime someone mistakes it for a macbook air too (arm based samsung chromebook). As you said they work quite well and don't require maintenance. I find the fact they are encrypted by default a nice perk too since I use mine on the go.

    This is pretty much what a netbook is suppose to be in my opinion. Small lightweight laptop, small ssd, and effecient CPU/GPU, with a stripped down OS with nothing non-essential auto-booting so it feels nice and quick to use. And this is pretty much what the Chrome OS and majority of the chromebooks do.

    I just find it sad there are a lot of computer geeks who bash chromebooks without realizing it wasn't meant to be a PC replacement that does everything. Nor was it meant to really be used without an internet connection. So the 2 big gripes they have about it was never their target audience. It's designed to just simply work for the average joe and to do so quickly and effectiently. And in the background though it has a lot of interesting things going on to make sure it's a secure OS as well, it's actually an interesting read if you look into all the things they did.
    Reply