HP 14" Dual-Core 16GB SSD Chromebook Price: $179.99 Shipping Options:: $5 Standard Shipping Estimates: Ships in 3-5 business days (Thursday, Aug 28 to Tuesday, Sep 02) + transit Condition: Factory Reconditioned
This looks like a decent deal, but note that this model DOES NOT appear to have the 200MB of Free 4G (T-Mobile HSPA+) for Life. (It also has half the RAM of the 4G model, which was only $20 more the last tiome it was on Woot.)
[MOD: Correct, this is a Wi-Fi Chromebook, not a 4G one. ]
Thats because this one doesn’t have the wireless antennae required to get the signal. I high recommend waiting for the 4gb model as the difference truly is night and day.
WARNING !
Poor refurbishing. The keyboard appears to be integrated into the mother board .
HP’s recondition for keyboard repair is to put a drop of heat sensitive glue behind a defective key for reconditioning . This glue melts after slight use of normal motherboard heating and “repaired” key pops up.
A shame because otherwise it’s a nice PC.
Doubtfull this keyboard if new would survive student use.
I’d be all over this like white on rice if I didn’t already own this one. Although that one has double the ram, my Acer C720 Chromebook has only 2GB ram and I haven’t noticed any performance issues.
I’ve streamed Netflix, Amazon ect with no issues due to 2GB ram. I’ve had multiple tabs open editing spreadsheets and documents with no problems.
I upgraded to the 14" screen on the HP and it is a lot nicer. Build quality is good on my HP Chromebook.
Chromebooks can read and edit Microsoft documents with ease using free online tools from Microsoft. You can also use Google Docs if you prefer. I’ve not yet met a video that my Chromebook won’t play.
There’s even *.pdf file editors, and I just discovered a free epub app for reading books!
Sure it’s not a “gaming” machine, but that isn’t always a bad thing parents
I’ve bought two of these; both are the model that has the T-Mobile wireless.
Ain’t gonna lie: I love these things. For what they are, they’re amazing. The screen is good enough; the keyboard is good enough; the speed and storage is good enough. (Admittedly, I did do an SSD upgrade to 128GB to have movies for road trips, but that was me geekin’ out, and not required!)
And the battery life is everything HP promises! I have gone several days with incidental use (i.e., Open the cover; check my mail; fiddle with a Google Doc or two; close the cover) and still had more than 1/2 battery left.
The only thing I’d caution about this deal is that without the wireless capability, I would find the thing less useful. It’s nice to be able to be just about anywhere and be able to just pop it open and go to work, instead of having to find a hotspot; dink around with connecting and accepting terms of service and what-not before being able to work. The T-Mobile (or, presumably, any GSM) capability really makes this a better information appliance.
Agreed; I have the 4G/4GB version. I adore it, it has not so much as slowed down in Chrome OS (even with a video streaming and 16+ tabs going). I would not like it as much with half the RAM; I use this in Linux mode a LOT and I know it makes a big difference in what games I can & cannot run. Now I just need to look into how hard it is to swap an SSD on it… moar is bettar!
Can’t you make your smartphone a mobile hotspot? I have the Acer C720P with 4GB RAM and 32GB SSD. I love it for travel. It’s great for getting some stuff done on the go. I got my fiance this HP with the 4GB and T-Mobile service, but it never leaves the house. I got her the coral pink color and she’s in love with it. It’s a bit bigger and heavier. The larger screen is nice, but I actually prefer the smaller Acer for carrying around though.
Chromebooks are great little laptops for the majority of people out there. Ultra-fast bootup times, no winrot over time, and no antivirus or updates to worry about. Due to the minimal system resources required to run Chrome OS, they can use ultra efficient, low power CPUs and get long battery life (the new Tegra K1 version gets 13 hours of battery life). They are inherently secure because everything runs in a sandbox and malicious code can’t really do anything. If you’re a tech geek you can install Crouton and run Ubuntu on them. But really, if you have that family member who only really uses the machine for web and media content, and is always asking you to fix their PC…get them a Chromebook.
Also, you can easily run Chrome OS with 2GB RAM and be fine. Where you really notice the extra RAM is when you have a lot of tabs open. When you go back to a previous tab it has to reload that tab. The more RAM, the less you have to reload tabs and the more multitasking you can do, like play music or stream to Chromecast while having a bunch of tabs open in the browser. Go Intel over ARM processors for performance, unless it’s the new Tegra K1. That thing screams. The previous mobile chipsets (and even the Exynos in the new Samsung Chromebook 2) get bogged down pretty easily when multitasking.
Something else to keep in mind is that there are more and more apps in the Chrome web store, and more and more run offline. With the upcoming release of Android L, many Android apps will be able to run in Chrome OS and you’ll have nice integration with Android devices, even controlling them from your Chromebook (like texting from your computer automatically when your phone is nearby).
I have both the Acer C720 (2GB/16GB version) and the HP Chromebook 14 (4GB/32GB/4G version) and can attest that they’re wonderful machines. I particularly love that it doens’t matter which machine I pick up to use, they’re both always 100% synched with one another - local files notwithstanding of course.
I use the Acer when I want something light and fast, like if I’m heading out and plan to stop at a WiFi cafe or if I have a flight to catch. The HP gets used when I’m sitting around the house or if for some reason I need more horsepower - though to be honest I’ve not yet encountered a situation where the smaller RAM in the Acer has caused anything to not work as advertised. The available 4G data on the HP is a nice touch, but I’m still learning about how/when I would use that.
I am considering an SSD upgrade for portable media, but to be honest I don’t know which machine I would be upgrading. Most of the scenarios where I would be watching movies would be in hotel rooms, and with their Wifi I have access to Netflix and my own media library on my home NAS. If on an airplane or if sitting in the backseat of my car with my kid, I could see how using the Acer (with it’s smaller footprint) would be a plus.
Anyway, it is important to share that Google is planning to roll out to Chrome OS the ability to run native Android apps this fall. Right now, only three apps are “approved” (Vine, Flipboard and Evernote) and things from Mountain View have been kinda quiet on this front, but if Google can pull this off it’ll be huge.
[edited to add]: BaeckerX1 already briefed y’all on the Android/ChromeOS convergence…
Bought this last week when it came with the free T-Mobile data. Started playing with it last night and it’s a great machine. Was disappointed to find that it does not come with the free 100gb of Google Drive storage, since its a refurb, but that only costs $2 a month anyway.
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