In a surprise announcement made at the Chromium Blogtoday, Google announced that Chrome OS, Chrome, and Opera will use a new rendering engine titled ‘Blink’. Blink is based of the current rendering engine WebKit. Google states the change is “not an easy decision,” but the change is necessary due to a ‘slow down of innovation.”
Google seems quite apologetic in the blog post, noting it understands the change may have significant implications for the web, but hopefully, in the long run, it will improve the health of the open web ecosystem.
It noted that the change will have little impact in the short-term to developers and Internet users, but Google hopes that the removal of the “multi-process architecture” will simplify the engine’s code and ease the difficulty required to develop for Chrome and Chrome OS. Ultimately, Google also hopes the new engine will speed up Internet load times.
The full press release via the Chromium Blog is available below.
Google made an announcement on the Official Chrome Blog to confirm that it is rolling out Chromebooks to new countries starting today. After successful launches in the United States and United Kingdom, Google has partnered with retailers in a handful of other countries to bring the latest Chromebooks from Samsung, HP, and Acer to new parts of the world including: Canada, Australia, Germany, Ireland, France, and the Netherlands.
Google will also expand the number of U.S. outlets offering the devices in the next few weeks to 1,000 Best Buy stores nationwide. The company didn’t mention its own, recently announced Chromebook Pixel model or whether it is available to purchase in the newly added countries.
Many of you around the world have told us you’re eager to get your hands on a Chromebook, so we’ve been working with our partners to make this possible. Today we’re happy to say we’re one step closer to making Chromebooks truly “for everyone” — or rather, pour tout le monde, für alle, and voor iedereen
Canada: In Canada the devices will launch through BestBuy.ca a Futureshop.ca with the Samsung ($269.99) and Acer ($249.99) models, while the $329.99 HP Chromebook will be available through HPshopping.ca.
Australia: Australians get access to the Samsung and Acer Chromebooks elect JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman stores, while the HP Chromebook will be coming soon.
France: Customers in France get access to the 299 euro Samsung Chromebook starting today through “Fnac.com, Ticketmaster, Amazon and Pixmania, as well as 10 Fnac stores in the Paris region.”
Netherlands: In the Netherlands the Samsung and Acer models will be available to purchase through “mediamarkt.nl, saturn.nl and laptopshop.nl and in the store at all 41 Mediamarkt and Saturn stores.”
Google also announced that the Chromebooks will be available to businesses and schools in the new countries and explained in detail in a post on its Enterprise blog.
“To help improve computing for organizations, we’re rolling out Chromebooks to businesses and schools in these same countries as well. Learn more on our Enterprise blog.”
If the Pixel sparked your interest in investing in a Chromebook, but its absurd price turned you off, then the Acer C7 Chromebook may be what you’re looking for. Announced via press release this afternoon, the new-and-improved Chromebook C7 from Acer boasts a number of useful performance boosts.
First and foremost comes a much-needed battery update. The original C7 Chromebook’s battery capped out at 3.5 hours, today’s C7 update pushes that up to 6 hours. The update today also doubled the RAM from the original model to a more reasonable 4GB. The processor remains the same at 1.1GHz.
The Acer Chromebook C7 is available and will ship today from Amazon and other retailers for $279.99.
Mac’s edges are thinner but about the same overall
pretty close
Backsides
left sides
Pixel siiiightly lower
Screen height is similar to 15″ macbook pro
$250, $1300, $2200
who invited the guy on the end?
the workstation
Look at the text!
Look at the text!
Look at the text!
familiar sized power brick
Long before the Chromebook Pixel was released, I, and surely many other Chromebook users, begged Google to create a high-end laptop that would allow technology professionals to use the Chrome OS to its fullest. To really give it a run against our high-end MacBook Pros and PC workstations, Google would have to throw more than the repurposed netbook hardware that OEMs like Samsung, Acer, HP, and others were giving this operating system.
Google’s Pixel is that high-end machine, but does it stack up where it needs to? First, the good: Read more
Chrome version 25 was released with a new Web Speech API that allows web developers to integrate speech-to-text dictation into their web applications.
The other feature of importance on the new version is the removal of “silent extensions.” Silent extensions are web-browser extensions that install without your knowledge. From now on, every web extension installation must be manually approved.
The updated version is available here, but Chrome’s auto-update feature may have already installed it for you.
