Acer Inc’s (宏碁) Chromebook, an always-connected laptop running on Google Inc’s Chrome operating system (OS), remains competitive on Amazon.com Inc’s bestseller list for laptop computers six weeks after going on sale last month.
As of yesterday morning, the 11.6-inch Acer Chromebook with Wi-Fi connectivity was ranked seventh on the list, extending its stay in the top 100 to 42 days.
The 12.1-inch Samsung Series 5 Wi-Fi Chromebook was ranked 15th, while the 3G Chromebook version in the same series was 12th.
Ahead of the Acer model were two Toshiba regular notebooks, two Apple MacBook Pros, another Acer laptop and a Hewlett-Packard ProBook.
“They are what netbooks have been all along,” Richard Shim, senior analyst at consulting firm DisplaySearch, said on the company’s blog.
“Now the mini-note category is shrinking as brands move away from the modest margins of mini-notes to tablet PCs, while the need and opportunity for devices specialized for Internet access remains,” he added.
Consumers looking for an instant-on device with a long battery life and sleek design, or just for connecting to the Web for e-mail and accessing digital media will find Chromebooks of interest, Shim said.
On May 31, Google announced at Computex Taipei 2011, the world’s second-largest computer trade show, that it would launch two Chrome-based laptops, or Chromebooks, in cooperation with Taiwan-based Acer and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, to capitalize on the growing popularity of its Chrome browser.
Google says Chrome OS, which resembles the look and feel of its Chrome browser, provides users with faster and easier access to applications like e-mail and spreadsheets on the Web, compared with storing them on PCs.
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