Could this be Google's slick new touchscreen Chromebook?
Supposed leaked ad claims to show the full monty
Video If what purports to be a leaked video turns out to be legit, Google may be planning to shake up the PC hardware market by releasing a new, upscale Chromebook featuring a high-resolution touchscreen display.
Rumors of a touchscreen Chromebook have been floating around since last year, but the only sources have been Chinese supply-chain watchers, whose track record for accurate prognostication is not great, to put it mildly.
But a new online video first discovered by Chrome OS fan François Beaufort appears to be an ad showing just such a device. And judging by the polished, professional-sounding voiceover, the new Chromebook may be closer to being released than anyone suspected – that is, if it doesn't turn out to be a complete hoax.
The device in the video is named the Chromebook Pixel, and the narrator goes out of his way to explain that it was "designed entirely by Google ... down to the last pixel."
About those pixels: there are a lot of them. Four million, to be exact. Beaufort reckons that would give the device a screen resolution of 2560 by 1700, for a total of 4,352,000 pixels per display. Assuming these are 12.1" panels, like earlier rumors have suggested, that translates into a whole lot of dpi.
Is the Chromebook Pixel real? The video shows what looks like a metal-bodied laptop running Chrome OS
The ostensible ad gives no further details about the specs or capabilities of the device, other than to make repeated reference to this high-resolution screen. Just why screen resolution would be so important on a device that is little more than a glorified web browser isn't exactly clear, but there you have it.
What's interesting about the device shown in the video, however, is that it appears to be made out of some kind of metal, possibly aluminum. Previous Chromebooks have all been made of plastic, and their design has been less about frills than about economy – the low end of the current Chromebook line, the Acer C7, retails for a paltry $200.
If the Chocolate Factory really is planning to ship a Chromebook that resembles a MacBook Pro more than a netbook, as this video would seem to suggest, it could potentially ruffle the feathers of its hardware partners in much the same way that Microsoft rankled OEMs by releasing Surface under its own brand.
And then again, it could all be an elaborate ruse – albeit a skillfully crafted one, right down to the judicious use of familiar Chrome OS marketing language. We leave it to you to judge, dear readers – that is, until the video gets yanked down, at least.
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COMMENTS
The real error message knows how to spell "its".
The post is required, and must contain letters.
Private content.
We're sorry, but we cannot display this content because it has labelled private by it's author.
Re: 4 million pixels?
What are you, an idiot? Why would they release a laptop with a 1366×768 resolution and call it Pixel, and have all the marketing be drawing attention to the screen and resolution?
That would be like releasing a new computer called RAM MONSTER with 1gb of ram.
To be really pedantic ...
... its is not an exception to the rule. "Its" doesn't have an apostrophe for the same reason that "yours", "hers" and "ours" don't: they are possessive pronouns. The easy way to remember this is to remember how you would spell "his" -- an apostrophe would obviously be incorrect.
An even easier rule is to never to put an apostrophe in unless you are absolutely sure one is required - its quite possible to pass off an unintended omission as a stylistic choice, whereas the spurious apostrophe cannot be so justified.
Re: Subsidies?
Once people get to know more about ChromeOS yes there will be a market for it.
I've had one for a week and already four of the people I've shown it to have bought one. These are ordinary folks and small business people that really do 90% of their computing in the web with a bit of word processing and the odd spreadsheet.
Normal folks just want something quick and simple to use. ChromeOS does just that. No real need for IT support either. That's the big worry for a lot of people here. If ChromeOS goes big a lot of people will be surplus to requirements.
Google just needs to start pushing it. It has a mighty marketing arm and so far I think it's just been doing an extended beta test.
The computing experience for the masses is about to arrive.
