Google Chromebooks Rain on School Children, Invade HP

The HP Pavilion Chromebook, the first HP machine based on Google’s new-age Chrome OS. Photo: HP

Last December, Acer and Asus both announced that they would cease production of “netbooks.” Many observers blamed the rise of the iPad and other tablets for the public’s waning interest in these dirt-cheap laptops. But the Chromebook — a new breed of cheap laptop that runs Google’s minimalist Chrome OS operating system — continues to attract attention from both customers and manufacturers.

The number of schools using Chromebook laptops doubled from 1,000 to 2,000 in the past three months, according to recent blog post from Google. And now, as it struggles to transform its venerable computer business, HP has entered the Chromebook market.

Google didn’t reveal the total number of Chromebooks used in schools, but it did cite a few examples. In North Carolina, Transylvania County Schools is deploying 900 devices, according to Google. In Floriam, Catholic prep school St. Thomas Aquinas High School is using 2,200 devices. And in the San Francisco Bay Area, urban charter network Rocketship Education is using 1,100 Chromebooks.

Meanwhile, HP is now taking orders for its first Chromebook, the HP Pavilion Chromebook. It costs $329.99, and it’s the first Chromebook to include a 14-inch screen. The others available thus far have 11.6- or 12-inch screens. But it’s also more expensive than the entry-level Chromebooks from Acer and Samsung, which cost $200 and $250 respectively. And the Pavilion has a significantly shorter battery life than Samsung’s ARM-based Chromebook, as The Verge points out.

That said, it’s not quite as expensive as Lenovo’s forthcoming $430 Thinkpad Chromebook, or Samsung’s higher-end Intel-based Chromebook, which starts at $450.

Google introduced Chromebooks in the summer of 2011. The OS is extremely lightweight. It’s little more than a browser, enabling users to run web applications and little else. Although the company is also offering Chromebooks to the consumer and business markets, the education market makes the most sense. Many schools want to provide a laptop for each student, but don’t want the expense or maintenance that come with a more fully featured computer.

Google also offers an education version of its increasingly popular cloud-based e-mail and productivity service Google Apps, enabling it to provide both hardware and services to schools.

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