Google Chrome OS Cr-48 Notebook Goes On Public Sale in China

Google's Chrome OS-running Cr-48 netbook is quite a hot item nowadays, so coveted that, despite only being available directly from Google, it's already become available for sale in China.

As you will certainly remember, search-engine giant Google officially introduced a couple of weeks ago its first-ever netbook, the Cr-48, meant to offer at glimpse at the future Chrome operating system's capabilities, and made it available within its Pilot program (sort of a beta-testing initiative).

However, as GizInChina reports, it seems that, if you happen to live in China and you have 7,777.77 Chinese yuan (roughly 1,170.84216 U.S. Dollars) to spare, you'll be able to get one of the new Cr-48 netbooks even if you haven't qualified for the aforementioned program, since the item was listed as being available for sale on one of China's largest online sales portals, Taobao (with no less than 77 pieces being available in stock).

While the photos posted within the respective listing seem to be genuine enough (we've also added them to our article, so you can check them out directly), there's very little technical info to go on, the vendors informing possible customers that the device sports a 12-inch display, an Atom CPU running at 2.66 Ghz, a built-in 3G module and 64GB of built-in flash memory.

As far as we're concerned, the listing on Taobao has two possible explanations: either we're talking about clones (which shouldn't be much of a surprise, given the fact that, after all, Chine is the land of knock-offs), or about genuine Cr-48 netbooks that were more or less voluntarily misplaced (we seriously doubt that Google would actually sell these things in China, since it's not doing it anywhere else around the world).

However, we wont' probably get to know the truth about these netbooks unless someone actually gets to purchase one, and if one of you happens to do so, please, don't hesitate to drop a line in our comments section.