This week in tech history Google unveils the first consumer Chromebooks Engadget
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AFP thru Getty Images At Engadget, we spend each day searching at how era will form the destiny. But it is also vital to appearance lower back at how a long way we have come. That's what This Week in Tech History does. Join us each weekend for a recap of historical tech information, anniversaries and advances from the recent and not-so-current past. This week, we're searching at Google's 2011 I/O event, where it announced the primary two Chromebooks that could cross on sale later within the year.
Google has been conserving I/O, its annual developer conference, in early May for years now. As such, there may be often a lot of incredible Google-targeted anniversaries to understand this time of year, and nowadays is no exception. Eight years ago (May 11th, 2011), Google announced the primary two commercially-to be had Chromebooks from Acer and Samsung. At the time, those have been just a pair of bulletins within the center of 2 days of news, however it was a huge milestone for Google's fledgling Chrome OS. And whilst it took years for Chromebooks to shake a popularity of being devices that have been each cheaply-made and not very succesful, we can appearance lower back now at these laptops because the begin of something vast for Google.
The 11.6-inch Acer Chromebook and 12.1-inch Samsung Series 5 Chromebook were reduce from comparable material. Both used low-power Intel Atom processors, used small strong-kingdom drives and claimed incredible battery lifestyles, at the least for the time: 6.5 hours for the Acer and over 8 hours for the Samsung. With extraordinarily small shows, both computers appeared without difficulty similar to the numerous small, low-price Windows netbooks that have been not unusual within the early 2010s. Though with expenses starting at $350 and up, these Chromebooks absolutely price a chunk more than some netbooks strolling Windows 7 at the time.
With a semi-steeply-priced price tag of $429 and an unproven OS, Samsung's Series 5 Chromebook wasn't an obvious winner -- however it turned out to be a surprisingly strong option. The hardware itself became look at and well-built, the screen become respectable, battery existence turned into strong and the overall performance ok -- furnished that you could get through with the many barriers imposed with the aid of Chrome OS in 2011. There turned into essentially no offline mode to speak of, Netflix did not paintings and customers most effective had 16GB of neighborhood garage to paintings with. At a time whilst cloud garage become each pricey and now not always dependable, a Chromebook become really now not for every person.
But even in 2011, it became equally actual that plenty of what one wished a laptop for might be performed in an internet browser, assuming your desires were fairly simple. Gmail, Gchat, Google Docs and Facebook included a number of use cases -- and while Netflix failed to work with Chrome OS right off the bat, Google did promise it would add assist before long. Add within the new cloud tune locker that Google announced at I/O, and plenty of basics had been covered. Indeed, whilst we reviewed the Series 5, we observed that while it wasn't ready to be a major computer, it was some distance more capable than we would have anticipated.
While Chrome OS felt a piece like every other beta product when it released, the best news it that Google has saved up a consistent move of enhancements. Given that Google has a bit of a reputation for abandoning and killing initiatives at a second's be aware, the company has been consistently supportive of Chromebooks, subsequently turning them into far greater than laptops that "can simplest run a browser." Features like offline help, better internet apps and Google Play / Android compatibility all made the software program revel in more complete.
At the identical time, Google's hardware companions fast started out promoting Chromebooks under $300, making it an excellent choice for students or for folks who desired a easy, low-value laptop as a 2d pc. And after gaining a few traction within the marketplace with the ones less expensive laptops, hardware makers followed the lead Google set with its wildly highly-priced but well-constructed Chromebook Pixel and started making higher-give up Chromebooks of their personal.
Now, eight years after those first customer-prepared Chrome OS gadgets were introduced, 21 percent of all laptops sold in the US in Q42019 have been Chromebooks. Google has also made plain progress in training, with one research company estimating that Chromebooks made up 60 percent of K-12 computer purchases in2019. And that power is based totally largely around what made Chromebooks appealing in 2011, even if they were nevertheless very a good deal a piece in progress. There's something to be said for simplicity and pace.
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//www.engadget.com/2019/05/11/this-week-in-tech-history-google-first-chromebooks/
2019-05-11 14:28:31Z
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