Google’s Chromebook Pixel: $1,300 Laptop in the Cloud
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Google(NEW YORK) — Google’s proving that it’s much more than a software maker.
The company this week previewed Google Glass, its Internet-powered glasses, and now it’s announced a new laptop — the Chromebook Pixel — based on its Chrome operating system. The laptop has a high-resolution 12-inch screen and will start at $1,300.
“With the Pixel, we set out to rethink all elements of a computer in order to design the best laptop possible, especially for power users who have fully embraced the cloud,” Linus Upson, Google’s vice president of Engineering, wrote in a blog post Thursday.
Chrome OS, the Chrome operating system, is built entirely around Google’s Chrome browser and the Web. The idea is that since all of Google’s services are in the cloud — on the Internet instead of your hard drive — you don’t need much more on a laptop.
While Acer, HP and Samsung have made other affordable Chromebooks in the $200 to $250 range, Google’s new Pixel costs almost three times as much because of the new screen technology and more powerful internal computing parts.
The Pixel, Google claims, has the highest-resolution screen of any laptop on the market. The 2560×1700 touchscreen has high pixel density, so images and text will look crisp. The machine is made of anodized aluminum, and has a glass trackpad and a backlit keyboard.
Internally the laptop has a Core i5 processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of solid-state storage space. That’s a small amount of local storage, but if you buy the machine you get a free terabyte of cloud storage space with Google’s Drive service. Google offers 1 terabyte for $50 to non-Pixel owners. There will also be an LTE version of the laptop for $1,449.
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio