This is actually a bad sign for Chromebooks. Up untill now they have been market differentiators due to either their low cost or focus on unique features. This is just a HP laptop running chrome. I think Google needs to force manufactures to hold a different standard to get ChromeOS officially licensed on their hardware. Where is the High resolution display or exceptional battery life, or super low cost. At the end of the day this laptop and not the 199 ARM chromebook is what can tank ChromeOS. This is what people pick up and have bad experiences with and then never touch again.

This is exactly what OEMs will do with any alternative OS using the market differentiation as excuse.

I can hardly wait for OEM specific Linux distributions, each with its own way of doing everything.

That sounds like Apple!

This HP laptop indeed doesn't look to be a great find, but I doubt it will be slower than the Samsung ARM one. So it's more expensive, OK. Maybe it's the larger screen, and/or the HP brand, but folks aren't forced to buy it.

So, Google should adopt ARM policies more like Microsoft's?

They already have stricter ones. No one can put Chrome on a device without Google's direct intervention. So that means Google and company decided this device was a good fit for chrome. MS doesn't even do that.

If anyone has ever owned an HP laptop of any description recently, they will know not to go near this, not even with a 20 foot long stick.

Absolutely shoddy machines from end to end.

I have had or maintained at some point:

* An almost 2 year old dm1z netbook

* A 13" Pavilion laptop from late 2010

* An EliteBook 8540p

* Two older Pavilion notebook, late 2006 and late 2007

And I am very happy with the quality of their machines. The EliteBook is a tank that can compare with ThinkPads in reliability. The Pavilions are sturdy and decent for consumer notebooks. The netbook is brilliant for a $400 device, and has survived multiple drops without any serious marks.

One of the Pavilion's screen broke down in warranty, and HP's support and repair service have been a painful and infuriating experience. I can say the same about any warranty claim I have tried to make as a consumer rather than a professional client (having dealt with Lenovo, Sony and HP).

I wouldn't go near this thing (shitty screen and battery life and subpar compontents for this price level), but I wouldn't say bad things about HP's products in general. Except for their printers, those are just evil.

I have had no problem with the quality of HP machines. But, their support is horrible. I purchased a computer in late 2010 and in 2012 when Windows 8 came out, I could not upgrade it because they did not offer drivers for it. Their official policy (http://www8.hp.com/us/en/ad/windows-8/about-upgrading.html) is to only provide drivers for computers purchased after October 2011. A one year support window for products is completely unacceptable in my eyes.

Heres a tip if you want to buy hp - buy their enterprise class hardware (probook / elitebook). The support on those is very good.

Bollocks - they are just as shit with respect to support.

Not in my experience - I have had spare parts overnighted to me on two occasions. Theres a 24/7 online chat which has had surprisingly good people that have been able to fix issues.

What country are you in? I'm talking about UK support, so you might have better luck in another country.

I am in the US.

I'd say the same about Dell.

Just install the Vista/Windows 7 drivers. The majority of them will work without issue.

That is true apart from Intel Graphics.

Right, but those are supplied by Intel, not HP...

HP doesn't write or supply any drivers - they are all 3rd party packages rewrapped by HP.

Contrary to this, I'm still getting driver updates for my 2007 ThinkPad T61.

I've bought many laptops, and regretted it every time I didn't buy a ThinkPad. That's not to say the others are bad. It's just that ThinkPads are in a class of their own.

I can't give you any experience on that front, since I mostly use Linux.

"I miss the days when men were men and wrote their own device drivers." -- Linus Torvalds

Enough of that. Because Windows 8 uses the same kernel as Windows 7 (and Vista) with a minor .x upgrade, you should just use the 7 drivers, as they'll most likely work.

Anyway, I don't understand why you would want to "upgrade" to W8 anyway. It's not good at all unless you have a touchscreen, and the performance gains are very minimal. Just stick with 7, trust me, you'll be happier.

That doesn't work for graphics drivers as there is a different driver model for Windows 8 than Windows 7.

But aren't the graphics drivers supplied by Intel or nVidia, not HP? Whenever I've had to download a graphics driver update it has always been from the manufacturer of the chip. I don't think HP is to blame for that...

Agreed - this is not HP's responsibility.

HP warranties and support are just as bad for corporate customers. It's easier to just buy parts from Misco and fix it yourself most of the time. That goes for everything from desktops to high end servers. Sony service stinks as well.

Lenovo have been ok for corporate support from experience - they bend over backwards for us although we occasionally get a bad rep which needs threatening a bit :)

As for HP's other products, their calculators are a bit crappy (made by chinese outfit Kinpo), their printers are shit I agree and their best line of kit (test gear), they spun off to Agilent so the HP brand wouldn't take them down.

I've only had one ThinkPad break, and I had it for less than a year at the time. Three weeks before the laptop turned 1 year old, I called Lenovo, and was redirected to an Irish support guy who had limited knowledge of my native language.

After trying to make clear what was wrong with the machine, he told me my warranty had already expired (though my invoice was dated less than a year before that, and the EU requires consumer electronics to come with a minimum of 2 years of warranty). The issue was never resolved, and I performed the needed repairs myself.

We've had similar issues. You usually just threaten to "come to fucking <insert country> and burn the support center down" and they will escalate it to the right people and it will get resolved.

Fine example: Sony just replaced my spare TV which was 2 years out of warranty.

As for my ThinkPad, I bought two. If this one fails, I will just get the other one out and use it whilst repairing this with bits from eBay for not much money at all.

Aren't all hardware made at Foxconn and similar anyway? I've seen people having lots of issues with their macs or lenovo too while others seems to be doing just fine with their hp and vice versa. It's hard to know which hardware is better than others given that they're all made at the same places (for the most part) and all we tend to have are personal anecdotal evidences.

The same factories will produce different quality items depending on the design and how much they get paid.

Not an anecdote for once...

One of our clients is a large insurer who have just dumped HP due to reliability problems. They have approximately 3000 laptops in the field. The were all HP business line (EliteBook and ProBook)

Their failure rate in a year was nearly 25% for HP kit.

Moving to Lenovo, they've got a 4% failure rate now.

Now for anecdotes: I've owned two HP workstations (one PA-RISC and one Intel) and both blew up spectacularly, one HP laptop (about 10 years ago - an OmniBook) and it blew up. They stick dynamite in the damn things.

Contrary anecdote. I have an HP laptop from 2004 I still use for some tasks. I have an HP11c I use almost daily.

None of which proves the new device is any good.

I don't think yours is contrary; you're probably a data point in the other 75% that didn't fail. I don't think a single data point could ever be contrary to anything since it would never represent an aggregate. Since I have a dead HP notebook, I could claim that I have a 100% failure rate using your logic.

Wow, that is the first time I've ever heard anyone talk about a RISC processor in about 8 years.

I don't know what was wrong with your computers, but I've owned 4 HP notebooks, and all have performed spectacularly. They're built solidly and have (for the most part) good hardware-software integration. As with any OEM, there are going to be products at the high and low ends of the line, and similarly there are going to be several failing models.

With HP, I think it really is hit-or-miss. You either get a good computer, or you get a bad one. While my HPs have been good, my friend's G71 hard disk failed.

I've been wary of what I purchase from them, and how it's assembled, but it seems to have worked. Computers are computers, and the #1 thing to fail in them is the user. The #2 thing to fail is the software, and the #3 thing to fail is the hard disk. It's very rare that new PCs come out of any factory with a fried mobo or CPU.

It's just a matter of sifting through all of the junk to find the few hidden gems. HP has a problem with QC, but if you look enough, you'll find great products at even better prices.

Apart from ARM that is :)

I think it would be really cool to see RISC have a resurgence on desktops in the form of 64-bit ARM chips. ARM technology is getting better and better every day. One of these days x86-64 is going to be antiquated, and by then, imagine the possibilities! Thinner, more powerful convertible laptops, ultra-slim workstations, 20-hour battery life... The possibilities are endless.

It will happen. It better do as I'm an ARM Holdings shareholder.

It has happened before. I had a 32-bit ARM desktop once: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes

I've compared it with the already on the market Acer C7 11" Chromebook, and the biggest differences are: - SSD instead of HDD, but 16GB instead of 320. - form factor: 14" vs 11", but same screen resolution! - heavier, 1.8 kg vs 1.28 kg.

The 11" Acer is also cheaper, starting around $220.

So my conclusion is: really HP ? I'd like to hear from others if the SSD makes up the difference.

That was a bad call from Acer to use an HDD, regardless of how much storage it really has. It's a Chromebook. Another bad call for both is that they used a crippled Intel Celeron with terrible GPU graphics (remember you need the GPU for video acceleration, as well as other stuff), and it made the machine more expensive and with poorer battery life, instead of a brand new ARM CPU and GPU, like Samsung did.

That's a ludicrous statement. Let's remember that this machine is $50 cheaper than the vaporware Samsung ARM ChromeBook. And they clearly did everything possible to hit $200. It seems pretty hard to argue that they could have made it cheaper by using another CPU.

There was no plausible ARM SOC that Acer could have used 3 months ago (Exynos 5 is clearly not available in any kind of quantities, no other A15s are shipping even on paper, and anything else would be too slow).

Now, as for the HDD, they were clearly optimizing for a $200 pricepoint. If doing a HDD instead of an SSD was what it takes to get there, clearly that's what they had to do. Or are you suggesting that trying to make a $200 ChromeBook at all was a bad call? Because I have to strongly disagree there -- the main original complaints about ChromeBooks were that they were expensive and had incredibly crappy CPUs. This device took care of both those things. That seems totally worthwhile, even if there were other compromises in there.

(Now, this HP on the other hand looks like a completely unjustifiable device.)

>Let's remember that this machine is $50 cheaper than the vaporware Samsung ARM ChromeBook.

In what way is the Samsung ARM ChromeBook "vaporware"? It seems to be available: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-XE303C12-A01US-Chromebook-Wi-F...

More importantly it's owned by millions including me.

There doesn't seem to be much benefit to the ARM over the "crippled Intel Celeron" so far:

http://gigaom.com/2012/10/22/intel-v-arm-the-chromebook-perf...

Anandtech didn't seem to find much benefit from an SSD (they actually opened the Acer up and put in one they had lying around).

I'd link but the site seems down for me at the moment.

I don't think the SSD _can_ make up the difference. ChromeOS is a cloud OS once you boot there isn't much hitting of the disk at all.

Well, "once you boot up" is the key phrase here. One of the greatest things about CrOS is how fast it boots up and how fast it comes out of a sleep state. ISTM that SSD is important for these.

So it's just another 14" plastic boat. Uninspiring.

* low cost? not really

* long battery life? nope

* high res? nope

I don't know what to expect from this machine. To me, it's just a big netbook running Chrome OS

250...

$250 is where these things will take off. Not $350, not $329, $250.

For the performance and quality of these things, as well as the supposed near-disposability, this is the price that will start getting people to buy them in large numbers.

What is up with that resolution?!

Or that battery life. Who wants a Chromebook that lasts 4 hours on a charge according to the manufacturer!

My two year old HP dm1z has comparable performance, twice the memory, the same resolution in an 11" display, 9 hours of real world battery life, and runs a full OS. Is this progress?

If this is their backup plan to sell units when Windows 8 laptops sells dismally, I think they'll end up disappointed.

This is pretty horrible all over. And that resolution is a spit in the face.

i feel like HP is missing the point of chromebooks.