14 DAY TRIAL // Lots of notebooks have appeared over the past half a year, and more of them will come forth over the next few months. Most of them are more or less common, insofar as the term applies, but some are unusual, like the Chromebook prepared by Samsung.
Chromebooks are strange because they have a completely different relationship between hardware and software, compared to notebooks, ultrabooks and netbooks.
They have very little on-board storage, just a bit in addition to what is needed for the Chrome OS to run.
Meanwhile, they have access to cloud-based free space and perform all their work off-camp, so to speak.
Take the Samsung Chromebook headed to Malaysia for example. That being the item that this article is about.
On the surface, at least until the OS is booted on, it looks like a regular notebook of 11.6 inches. Some may even mistake it for an ultrabook.
Yet the CPU is a dual-core Exynos (Samsung-made, ARM-based), and the total storage capacity is of 16 GB.
Well, that's not quite true. The total capacity is of 160 GB, but 100 of those are provided through the cloud-based Google Drive Storage service.
That said, in addition to the 11.6-inch LCD (unknown resolution), the dual-core Exynos processor and the 16 GB SSD, the 1.1 kg device (2.42 pounds) also gets WiMAX.
That makes this the world's very first WiMAX Chromebook ever. Malaysia's telecom company Yes will be distributing it.
The price will be of RM988 (about $330 / €255) at Yes’s online store, plus RM311 ($103 / €80) as a down-payment for the WiMAX service, with the data plan being of $30 / €23 a month.
In time, the Google Chromebook might be used by Malaysian schools, and maybe educational institutions from other regions as well.
Source: Yes Twitter