back to article Speculative Googlenetbook specs surface

Mere days after the first rumors of an impending Google-built netbook hit the web, purported details of its innards have surfaced. Rumors of a Googlebook mirror the speculation that preceded the emergence earlier this month of Mountain View's HTC-manufactured, Android-powered Googlephone Nexus One smartphone. Those …

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  1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

    What for the price of what?

    If I saw a Ferrari for the price of a mini cooper I'd check it wasn't just a glass fibre ferrari body stuck to an old ford cortina.

  2. heyrick Silver badge

    Price and featureset

    I'm a pro-ARM person, having grown up with various Acorn machines etc. The specs look reasonably attractive, though history suggests that "sub-$300" will probably mean "sub-£300" never mind the exchange rate.

    This then puts it in line with various eeePC models. Such as the one I'm using right now, the 901XP.

    Within the limitations of what software will initially be available for the platform, at that kind of price I expect it to do the same sort of things as my eeePC - meaning I can word-process, program, read PDFs, etc etc without having to worry about whether or not I am "connected"...

    For anybody who thinks a nice simple little Internet machine is just the ticket, don't forget the Bush Internet Box which ended up being offloaded for a tenner apiece just to get rid of them. Technically reasonable at the time, the things suffered from being over-simplified.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hm

    Not bad, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that this *could* be a ferrari for the price of a mini cooper or whatever (btw, afaik mini cooper is now kind of accepted as a stylish car, so not especially cheap for its specs but well).

    For example, the new Acer Aspire One that I'm typing from right now cost me around $220 (pre-christmas sale) and it, if you don't count Bluetooth & 3G (which I do not use regularly anyway), is very much like the specs of this googlebook (well, it has one less GB of ram, but OTOH it has a 160GB HD (yes, HD, but I can bet that with time, you'll prefer more space than theoretical speedup).

    1. Andrew James

      mini cooper + stylish + not particularly cheap

      @AC ...

      Seriously... your grumbling with the "Ferrari for the price of a mini cooper" statement is that a mini cooper is not particularly cheap for its specification? Thats not the point. The point is that a Ferrari for £15,000 would be a bargain.

      It would be nice to see someone release a bit of kit like this that was packed full of high end features for a low-end price... which might then cause other manufacturers to follow suit, but realistically i can't see it happening. You will get a compromise on price, or a compromise on quality, or a compromise on features... thats just the way it works.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    It's the model, the business model silly?

    Cloud

    Software as a service

    Mobile comms

    Super smartphone

    (add your own stuff here)

    Takes a lot of work, a lot of partnership and could possibly cost a whole lot of dosh.

    They (Apple and google that is) could take an elitist view designed for busy business people with sizeable salary and equally sizeable ego and expense accounts to match and by doing so make the whole technology elite.

    Alternatively they could make it on a "pile it high sell it cheap" basis that has creditable credibility and ubiquitous ubiquity.

    My guess and take is that it really is the future just waiting to happen and that needs hardware (I bet intel was there years ago and wonder if AMD is listening?), software, cloud and telecoms people.

    A lorra, lorra stuff plus the design teams and applications that can port for pc, smartphone and netbook/iWhatevers. I mean, where will it be without content, content and content? Or even contented content?

    That requires muscle, partnership and ambition.

    Somehow I don't think it will be disappointing?

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Getting right to the Heart/Core of Future Matters

      No matter what Hardware/Software/Cloudware/Virtual Machine Control Combination you would care to Imagine and Mirror in a Clone Facility/Semiconductor Fabrication, EVERYTHING, and I do mean EVERYTHING, which is why it is shouted twice for added EMPhases, is Ruled and Led Absolutely and QuITE Sublimely by Intellectual Property Sharing. And thus does ARM, and increasing will ARM AIR&dD Sorties/Future Product Partnerships in ZerodDay ProgramMINGs for the AIMMORPG and ARGonauts on the Mutually Beneficial, Virtually Realised, Universally Attractive Quest, aka NeuReal and SurReal NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive IT World Order Programs in Civil CyberSpace Projects, Guarantee ITs Work, Rest and Play Partners, a Future Built to their ... well, it would be fair and accurate to say .... Design Wishes?

      And that is shared as a valid potential alien partner question of ARM Operating System InfraStructure Hosts/Executive Hierarchies, for such is the Future Root Map Memetic of Quantum Control Systems for NIRobotICQ Programs/Projects/XSSXXXXStreams, for of course, the Future is a CyberIntelAIgent Present Feed for IT and Media Shows. ....... and if not Public Property, as in Financed from Public Purses, then is the Future to be a Private and/or Pirate Sector Performance.

    2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      ARM steals a Long March Lead in and on Right Risky Advanced Intelligence Processing?*

      "It's the model, the business model silly" ....... Anonymous Coward Posted Monday 28th December 2009 23:35 GMT

      I agree, AC. The IT and Communications business is All about how you use Knowledge and Intelligence and everything else is secondary and contributary....... and the Best Processing is Hardware and Software Agnostic for it is all in the Analytical Algorithm being used by the Virtual Machine between the keyboard, used for inputting Instruction Sets and the Screen for Displaying Output.

      And Virtual Machinery is a Network when more than One Aspire to Conspire and Behave and Grow as a Singularity ...... IntelAIgent Invisible Force Field in CyberSpace Fields and Theatres of Secure Operations.

      * And better and more profitable than owning a Mint, which whenever a $100 bill might cost a notional 4cents, is a mighty big return for next to nothing other than the Magic Key .... Advanced Analytical Algorithm for Live Operational Virtual Environments ..... which as you may Imagine is an Addictively Attractive Abiding Passion in which Excellence of Service always Delivers Explosive, Mind Blowing,Knee Trembling Climaxes every Time. :-)

      And if that is not Perfection, well it is Good Enough to have one stay a While and Practice.

  5. Scott 9
    Megaphone

    Hmmm.....

    I guess I have three questions:

    If Google is so intent to have you use the Chrome OS and thereby only have caches of your files available locally, why even bother with 64GB of storage?

    Will people be tied to using Chrome or can they use anything they can load on it? (Hint, if I ever get one Chrome won't last long.)

    Why do they even need a Netbook of their own? Shorely they could get by just declaring which models of existing Netbooks have drivers and support and go from there?

  6. Big Bear
    Joke

    Ferrari performance?

    So that means it'll be quick enough to run Crysis at full resolution, but that the battery will only last a few minutes? Last I checked Ferraris weren't the most economical of cars!!

  7. George 24

    I thought that Chrome OS

    So Google is trying to "sell" Chrome OS as the OS that does not require much guts from your hardware, with low resource utilization web apps and then they want to build a high performance netbook???

  8. Mage Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    ChromeOS != Netbook

    Call it a WebBook or something. It might have similar spec to a Netbook, but as ChromeOS is at present, it's going to be a locked down Web Browser Client Appliance. Just because the OS is open Source doesn't mean the Gadget will be open.

  9. Tom_

    Not that exciting

    Those specs won't stand out as high performance in late 2010. That'll probably be a very average spec machine by then.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    They had me with...

    ARM + Nvidia.

    However, this is Google and I would not trust using such a device until the jailbreaks are out and you can drop your own OS on. And even then, can you be sure you know that the hardware is not talking to Mother?

    And, living in the UK, the cost of this will be obscene (probably US price * 1.5 and in £), never mind the low-bandwidth, poor coverage and sky-high prices we have to suffer for mobile internet.

    So I can't see myself buying on until those major hurdles are addressed here. Next millennium perhaps?

  11. mhenriday

    It would be interesting to learn

    whether those USB ports will be USB 3.0 compatible, in which case one could run a hi-def monitor from this machine, making it still more appealing....

    Henri

  12. jai

    Ferrari for the price of a Cooper?

    somehow, giving the pricing of the googlephone, i doubt that will be the case

  13. edde

    ARM, but of course....

    Of course Google select ARM instead of Intel or AMD. That way it wont be possible to run Windows on it, and wond Google love that! t all down to world dominance :)

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