Both Acer and Samsung were slow off the mark, with Kogan releasing the first Agora Chromebook on June 7th. Both market leaders however have released new laptops based around Google's Chrome operating system. The Agora machine was being marketed at a very respectable £269 inc vat.
Google have revealed that Wifi and 3G versions of the new Acer Chroma and Samsung Series 5 Chromebooks can be bought by US customers from Best Buy and Amazon directly for $379.99 and $429.99.
UK Retailer Dixons are taking preorders for the Samsung Series 5 for £399, which is a fairly sizeable investment. The Series 5 is based around an Intel ATOM dual core N570 processor with 2GB of ram and a 16GB SSD. It comes with a webcam, has bluetooth support and a 12.1 inch 1280×800 resolution screen. The Acer product has still not made an appearance on any store in the UK, but we would expect this to change in the next week.
While the UK pricing for the Samsung Series 5 seems high, Google are touting many impressive features, such as a 10 second start up time and hardware encryption capabilities. The machines are clearly marketed to target the iPad 2 market, but we arent sure they will be that successful as the iPad buying public seem very focused on the Apple technology.
You can check out the stockists via google's support site over here.
Kitguru says: Interested, or just too expensive?