Lenovo announces Yoga Chromebook, Ideapad C330 Chromebook, and Ideapad S330 Chromebook

At IFA 2018 in Berlin, Lenovo announced three new Chromebooks — Yoga Chromebook, Ideapad C330 Chromebook, and Ideapad S330 Chromebook. The Lenovo Ideapad C330 and S330 Chromebooks are more geared toward the education market, but the Yoga Chromebook is a mid- to high-end 2-in1 Chromebook that is geared toward the upmarket buyer. Let's dive into all three devices below!

Yoga Chromebook

The Lenovo Yoga Chromebook, which sports an all-aluminium body and a backlit keyboard, features a 15.6-inch IPS touchscreen display at a resolution of either 3840×2160 or 1920×1080, an Intel Core i5-8250U processor, 8GB of RAM, 64GB or 128GB of eMMC storage, two USB Type-C ports, one USB Type-A port, a microSD card slot, and a 56Whr battery.

Pricing and availability: The Lenovo Yoga Chromebook will be available in October at a starting price of $599.

Ideapad C330 Chromebook

The Lenovo Ideapad C330 Chromebook, which has a 2-in-1 convertible design, features an 11.6-inch IPS display at a resolution of 1366x768, a MediaTek 8173C processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB or 64GB of eMMC storage, a 720p webcam, a USB Type-C port, a USB Type-A (3.0) port, an HDMI port, an SD card slot, and up to 10 hours of battery life.

Pricing and availability: The Lenovo Ideapad C330 Chromebook will go on sale in October at a price of $279.99.

Ideapad S330 Chromebook

The Lenovo Ideapad S330 Chromebook is a more traditional clamshell laptop. The Ideapad S330 Chromebook has a 14-inch display at a resolution of 1366x768 or 1920x1080, a MediaTek 8173C processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB or 64GB of eMMC storage, a USB Type-C port, a USB Type-A (3.0) port, an SD card slot, and up to 10 hours.

Pricing and availability: The Lenovo Ideapad S330 Chromebook will go on sale on October at a starting price of $249.99.

#ChromeOS #Chromebooks #Lenovo

Dell announces Inspiron Chromebook 14

For the last few years. Dell has focused its Chromebook efforts on the education market. The only exception was the Dell Chromebook 13, which was one of the more beloved consumer-oriented Chromebooks. Today, Dell has taken the wraps off a new mid-range Chromebook called the Inspiron Chromebook 14.

The Dell Inspiron Chromebook 14, which has a 2-in-1 convertible design, a backlit keyboard, and an aluminum body, features a 14-inch IPS touchscreen display at a resolution of 1920x1080, an Intel Core i3 8130U processor, 4GB of RAM, up to 128GB of eMMC storage, two USB Type-C (3.1) ports, one USB Type-A (3.1) port, a microSD card slot, and a 56Whr battery. Finally, the Inspiron Chromebook 14 comes with a Wacom EMR stylus that can be stowed directly in the chassis.

The Dell Inspiron Chromebook 14 will be available in October at a starting price of $599.

#ChromeOS #Chromebooks #Dell

Acer announces Chromebook 514

At IFA 2018 in Berlin, Acer — the Chromebook leader in terms of market share — announced a refreshed Chromebook 14 called the Chromebook 514.

Acer didn't reveal the complete specifications of the Acer Chromebook 514 but I will run through the changes. The new Acer Chromebook 514 sports an all-aluminium body with reduced bezels around the display. The display is a 14-inch IPS panel at a resolution of 1920x1080 and there will be an optional touchscreen model. You now have a Gorilla Glass 3 track pad and a backlit keyboard. There are two USB Type-C ports, two USB Type-A ports, a microSD card slot, an HDR webcam, and up to 12 hours of battery life.

Acer has yet to reveal the processor and amount of RAM the device will have — only stating that the specifications will vary depending on the region. They did, however, state that the device will be released in October and will be priced at $349.99 in the U.S. The device will later expand to EMEA territories and will cost €349 in those regions.

#ChromeOS #Chromebooks #Acer

Great video by Robby from Chrome Unboxed, which showcases some of the changes coming with Chrome OS M70 (currently in Dev Mode).

There are a lot of changes here that are intended to help improve the experience in tablet mode, and my favorite would have to be the ability to swipe down on an open app to jump directly into overview mode. From there, you have the ability to swipe up or down to dismiss an app, or you can drag an app to the left or right to snap the app into split screen mode.

This is obviously a work-in-progress, but, as it stands, I'm currently not a fan of the transparency in the "always open" app launcher (which only appears in tablet mode). The full transparency makes the app icons blend in with your wallpaper, making them difficult to identify. Also, I feel like having an "always open" app launcher will result in accidental icon presses, but that may be me just nitpicking.

I'm assuming one of the reasons they went with the "always open" app launcher is because pressing the circle button previously offered a jarring experience in tablet mode. Users would typically press the circle button as they would on Android to go home and would instead run into an animation that opens up the app drawer. I haven't had any first-hand experience with Chrome OS M70, but pressing the circle button on the shelf should offer that same level of experience as on Android.

Anyway, be sure to check out the video below to see some of the changes coming with Chrome OS M70.

#ChromeOS #Chromebooks

ASUS announces Chromebook 12 C223

ASUS makes some really nice Chromebooks — both those that are education and consumer oriented. Today, the Taiwanese company took the wraps off the previously leaked Chromebook 12 C223.

The ASUS Chromebook 12, which has a "footprint that’s smaller than a sheet of A4 paper" and a keyboard that can repel up to 66cc of liquid, features an 11.6-inch anti-glare (non-touch screen) display at a resolution of 1366x768, an Intel N3350 processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of eMMC storage, an HD webcam, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, a microSD card slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack, 2 USB Type-C (3.0) ports, 1 USB Type-A (3.0) port, and a 38 Whr battery (good for about 10 hours of web browsing).

ASUS did not announce pricing or availability, but XDA says that we should expect a €320 (~$375 USD) price tag for the base model that will! Be sold in Europe. We should hear more about the device at IFA 2018.

#ChromeOS #Chromebooks #ASUS

The Stable Channel of Chrome OS¹ has been updated to version 68.0.3440.87 (Platform version: 10718.71.2/3) for most Chrome OS devices. As usual, this release contains numerous bug fixes and security patches. However, there are also some new user-facing features with this update. Check out what's new below!

•802.11r Fast BSS Transition Support
•Ability to use Select to Speak with touch/stylus only
•Admin policy to enable/disable client-side native printing
•Enabling/disabling ChromeVox through the side volume keys (tablets/convertibles)
•High resolution image support in camera app
•Introduction of Display Size settings
•Material 2.0 dialogs and secondary UI on ChromeOS
•Overview visual refresh and motion spec improvements
•PIN sign-in support
•Select-to-Speak ability to select specific text to be read aloud by highlighting the text, then pressing Search + s. This works in addition to the original behavior of pressing Search and clicking an item or dragging a box around content to be read aloud.
•Support Child account as first sign-in
•Two new shortcuts to toggle the magnifiers on/off

To see if your Chrome OS device got this update, visit the following URL:https://cros-updates-serving.appspot.com. Don't worry if your device didn't get this update, the Chrome OS team typically expands to more devices with the next build.

¹https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2018/08/stable-channel-update-for-chrome-os.html

#ChromeOS #Chromebooks

Google Chrome on desktop is known to be a memory hog, and many of my followers have definitely voiced their opinions on the browsers memory management in the past. However, if you've noticed the popular web browser using even more RAM since the release of Chrome 67 last month, you're not going crazy — it is.

Due to the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, the Chromium team has enabled (by default) a new advanced security features called Site Isolation. In layman terms, Site Isolation is a feature that prevents untrustworthy websites from accessing and stealing information from your accounts on other websites by acting as second line of defense behind Same Origin Policy. Site Isolation ensures the pages for each site is put in separate processes and each process is then sandboxed for an additional layer of security. The trade-off for the additional security is a 10-13% increase in Chrome's memory usage.

While this security feature is enabled on Chrome for desktop, Google's head of Chrome security, Justin Schuh, says that they haven't brought the feature over to Chrome for Android yet because they are still trying to work out the resource consumption issues.

#Chrome #Windows #Mac #Linux