| I have Wi-Fi at home and at the office, nearly every hotel or coffee shop on the planet offers connectivity, and for the rare in-between times, my phone serves as a perfectly usable (if slightly awkward) mechanism for getting on the internet. The only time I can’t get online now is underground on the subway and even that may not be true for long. |
| Meanwhile, my computer is increasingly becoming just a portal to the internet. I use Word and Outlook and Photoshop, but even those apps are designed to be perpetually connected and intertwined and browser-based approximations of those apps are ever improving. Even PC games are meant to be played online. If I have no Wi-Fi, my MacBook Air feels pointless, empty. | | This new order is one in which a Chromebook, an always-connected laptop that is explicitly designed to be used online, might actually make sense. And don’t look now, but the industry is noticing: Toshiba, Acer, Lenovo, and other manufacturers are announcing devices running Google’s Chrome OS, and Chromebooks are now used in 22 percent of US school districts and in countries around the world. | | The new head of the lineup, the device designed to unseat last year’s Samsung Chromebook at the top of the Amazon best-seller list, is the HP Chromebook 11. At $279, this 11.6-inch laptop is priced to move. And if it’s “just a web browser,” it’s a beautiful one. | | Google’s on a mission to connect the world to the internet, by hook or by crook. (Or by balloon.) The Chromebook 11 is our end of the wire. |
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