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Showing posts with label Tablets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tablets. Show all posts
Armed with a $900 million argument, an analyst has raised the Office-on-iPad banner, saying that the flop of the Surface RT gives Microsoft a chance to make billions in lemonade from its lemon.

" 'Protecting' Windows RT by keeping Office off of Apple's iPad and Android tablets isn't working," said J.P. Gownder, a principal analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, in a recent blog. "It's instead creating risk for Office as users find other ways of getting things done."

Gownder tied Microsoft's recent $900 million write-down of the Surface RT by Microsoft to a renewed call for the company to sell its ubiquitous productivity suite on rivals' tablets.

"The biggest asset Windows RT has is actually based on an app that Microsoft hasn't released—Office for Apple's iPad," Gownder wrote, referring to the operating system that powers the Surface RT. Windows RT bundles Office Home & Student 2013 RT, which includes touch-based versions of Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint and Word that run in a special "desktop" mode.

Outlook will join that roster this fall when Microsoft ships Windows 8.1 for RT.

Clamor for Office on tablets

Gownder's unsolicited advice to Microsoft wasn't out of the blue; a horde of analysts and pundits have called on the Redmond, Washington, software company to pull the trigger on Office for tablets powered by Apple's iOS or Google's Android.

But last week's $900 million write-down, which Microsoft said was to cover steep discounts and excess inventory, was the proof that the software giant's Windows RT/Surface RT pitch had fallen on deaf ears.

In turn, that made Microsoft's presumed strategy of withholding Office from other tablet platforms indefensible.

But Gownder, like other analysts before him, also pointed out that Microsoft may have already missed an opportunity. "Microsoft's problem [is that] workers and consumers are already exceptionally productive with their tablets. [And] there's a hidden danger of holding out on Office for iPad and Android tablets—competitors tend to fill the gap and users establish different habits," Gownder said.

He cited examples, including Apple's iWork—which Apple will take to the Web later this year—Google's Quickoffice, Evernote and other mobile apps that users have taken up in the absence of Office.

Gownder contended that Microsoft could recoup its Surface RT losses, and make more besides, if it offered Office on iPad. "If 10 percent of the 140 million iPad owners bought Office for $99.99, Microsoft would earn $1.4 billion in top line revenue, or $500 million more than the Windows RT write-down last quarter," he said.

Gownder may have based his math on the $100 annual subscription price for Office 365 Home Premium, the consumer-grade Office rent-not-buy plan. Assuming Microsoft does deliver Office for the iPad and Android tablets, it will most likely follow the same strategy it used last month for Office Mobile on the iPhone, requiring a valid Office 365 account to run the app.

What else have you got?

Others have recently called on Microsoft to focus less on Windows and more on other parts of its portfolio, including Office, in light of last week's 6 percent decline in Windows Division revenue, the $900 million Surface RT charge and the continued slide in PC shipments.

"Documents remain essential and ubiquitous to all of the world outside of Silicon Valley," noted Ben Thompson, until earlier this month a partner marketing manager in Microsoft's Windows app team. Thompson now writes on his Stratechery website. "An independent Office division should be delivering experiences on every meaningful platform. Office 365 is a great start that would be even better with a version for iPad."

In Microsoft's recent corporate reorganization, however, Office will not be an independent division—it is, more or less, in the current structure—but will instead be within the new Applications and Services Engineering Group, which will include Office, Microsoft's Bing search engine and Skype.

The company may well decide to continue resisting the potential of new Office revenue to keep Windows afloat. In the quarter that ended June 30, the Microsoft Business Division (MBD), whose biggest money maker is Office, recorded revenue of $6.43 billion, 1.7% more than the same period the year before, largely on sales to enterprises and in the face of a dismal quarter in PC shipments.

Microsoft may think the at-hand revenue is the smarter choice than more money accompanied by the risk of damaging Windows 8's tablet chances. But that would be a mistake.

Put Office on the iPad for tablet success, analyst advises

Armed with a $900 million argument, an analyst has raised the Office-on-iPad banner, saying that the flop of the Surface RT gives Microsoft a chance to make billions in lemonade from its lemon.

" 'Protecting' Windows RT by keeping Office off of Apple's iPad and Android tablets isn't working," said J.P. Gownder, a principal analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, in a recent blog. "It's instead creating risk for Office as users find other ways of getting things done."

Gownder tied Microsoft's recent $900 million write-down of the Surface RT by Microsoft to a renewed call for the company to sell its ubiquitous productivity suite on rivals' tablets.

"The biggest asset Windows RT has is actually based on an app that Microsoft hasn't released—Office for Apple's iPad," Gownder wrote, referring to the operating system that powers the Surface RT. Windows RT bundles Office Home & Student 2013 RT, which includes touch-based versions of Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint and Word that run in a special "desktop" mode.

Outlook will join that roster this fall when Microsoft ships Windows 8.1 for RT.

Clamor for Office on tablets

Gownder's unsolicited advice to Microsoft wasn't out of the blue; a horde of analysts and pundits have called on the Redmond, Washington, software company to pull the trigger on Office for tablets powered by Apple's iOS or Google's Android.

But last week's $900 million write-down, which Microsoft said was to cover steep discounts and excess inventory, was the proof that the software giant's Windows RT/Surface RT pitch had fallen on deaf ears.

In turn, that made Microsoft's presumed strategy of withholding Office from other tablet platforms indefensible.

But Gownder, like other analysts before him, also pointed out that Microsoft may have already missed an opportunity. "Microsoft's problem [is that] workers and consumers are already exceptionally productive with their tablets. [And] there's a hidden danger of holding out on Office for iPad and Android tablets—competitors tend to fill the gap and users establish different habits," Gownder said.

He cited examples, including Apple's iWork—which Apple will take to the Web later this year—Google's Quickoffice, Evernote and other mobile apps that users have taken up in the absence of Office.

Gownder contended that Microsoft could recoup its Surface RT losses, and make more besides, if it offered Office on iPad. "If 10 percent of the 140 million iPad owners bought Office for $99.99, Microsoft would earn $1.4 billion in top line revenue, or $500 million more than the Windows RT write-down last quarter," he said.

Gownder may have based his math on the $100 annual subscription price for Office 365 Home Premium, the consumer-grade Office rent-not-buy plan. Assuming Microsoft does deliver Office for the iPad and Android tablets, it will most likely follow the same strategy it used last month for Office Mobile on the iPhone, requiring a valid Office 365 account to run the app.

What else have you got?

Others have recently called on Microsoft to focus less on Windows and more on other parts of its portfolio, including Office, in light of last week's 6 percent decline in Windows Division revenue, the $900 million Surface RT charge and the continued slide in PC shipments.

"Documents remain essential and ubiquitous to all of the world outside of Silicon Valley," noted Ben Thompson, until earlier this month a partner marketing manager in Microsoft's Windows app team. Thompson now writes on his Stratechery website. "An independent Office division should be delivering experiences on every meaningful platform. Office 365 is a great start that would be even better with a version for iPad."

In Microsoft's recent corporate reorganization, however, Office will not be an independent division—it is, more or less, in the current structure—but will instead be within the new Applications and Services Engineering Group, which will include Office, Microsoft's Bing search engine and Skype.

The company may well decide to continue resisting the potential of new Office revenue to keep Windows afloat. In the quarter that ended June 30, the Microsoft Business Division (MBD), whose biggest money maker is Office, recorded revenue of $6.43 billion, 1.7% more than the same period the year before, largely on sales to enterprises and in the face of a dismal quarter in PC shipments.

Microsoft may think the at-hand revenue is the smarter choice than more money accompanied by the risk of damaging Windows 8's tablet chances. But that would be a mistake.

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Posted at 04:41 |  by Unknown
Microsoft has slashed the price of the Surface RT to $350 in an effort to spark demand for the tablet. While it’s a move in the right direction, it’s a little late, and it still doesn’t go far enough to make the Surface RT attractive for business use in a market dominated by Apple’s iPad
                                         The Touch or Type cover should be included with the Surface RT.

Before the Surface RT launched there was speculation that Microsoft might undercut the competition by offering the device for under $200. Had it done so, the tablet almost certainly would have sold much better, but with long-term repercussions for Microsoft and the tablet market in general. That price is too low to generate profit or be sustainable in any way, and raising the price after the fact is a hard sell for customers.

When Microsoft revealed that the Surface RT would actually be $499, there was a collective groan of disappointment, and much of the tech media started writing the epitaph for the device before it was even on the shelf. Although the $499 Surface RT has double the storage capacity of the equally-priced entry-level iPad—32GB compared to 16GB—I argued at the time that the price was simply too much for an “untested” tablet.

For starters, it’s not enough to just match the iPad in pricing—even with double the storage. The iPad is established as the leader among tablets, so a business or consumer looking to buy a tablet is much more likely to spend the $500 on an iPad than on a Surface RT. Then, there’s also the fact that the Surface RT essentially requires the Touch or Type keyboard cover, which must be purchased separately and adds another $100 to $130 to the cost.
Microsoft needs to drop the price even further if it wants to spark demand for the Surface RT.

Windows RT can’t run traditional Windows software, so the Surface RT is at a disadvantage compared to the Surface Pro, which at least is an actual Windows PC that doubles as a tablet. The Surface RT has more limited application, and is more likely to be used to augment a PC rather than replace it.

Still, the Surface RT is a solid device. It was good with Windows 8, and it will be even better with Windows 8.1. It comes with Office, and soon it will include Outlook as well. But now that Microsoft has launched Office Mobile for iPhone, and improved the capabilities of the Office Web apps for the iPad, Microsoft Office is much less of a factor in defining tablet choice.

So, what’s the sweet spot? $300—with the Touch keyboard cover included. With the reduced price of the Surface RT, that setup will still cost $470 right now, which is unlikely to sway the purchasing decision of an IT admin. If Microsoft throws in the Touch keyboard cover, though, that $350 starts to look much better as a mobile business tool, and if Microsoft adds in the cover and drops the price to $300, it would have a hard time keeping up with demand.

Surface RT price still misses the sweet spot for business

Microsoft has slashed the price of the Surface RT to $350 in an effort to spark demand for the tablet. While it’s a move in the right direction, it’s a little late, and it still doesn’t go far enough to make the Surface RT attractive for business use in a market dominated by Apple’s iPad
                                         The Touch or Type cover should be included with the Surface RT.

Before the Surface RT launched there was speculation that Microsoft might undercut the competition by offering the device for under $200. Had it done so, the tablet almost certainly would have sold much better, but with long-term repercussions for Microsoft and the tablet market in general. That price is too low to generate profit or be sustainable in any way, and raising the price after the fact is a hard sell for customers.

When Microsoft revealed that the Surface RT would actually be $499, there was a collective groan of disappointment, and much of the tech media started writing the epitaph for the device before it was even on the shelf. Although the $499 Surface RT has double the storage capacity of the equally-priced entry-level iPad—32GB compared to 16GB—I argued at the time that the price was simply too much for an “untested” tablet.

For starters, it’s not enough to just match the iPad in pricing—even with double the storage. The iPad is established as the leader among tablets, so a business or consumer looking to buy a tablet is much more likely to spend the $500 on an iPad than on a Surface RT. Then, there’s also the fact that the Surface RT essentially requires the Touch or Type keyboard cover, which must be purchased separately and adds another $100 to $130 to the cost.
Microsoft needs to drop the price even further if it wants to spark demand for the Surface RT.

Windows RT can’t run traditional Windows software, so the Surface RT is at a disadvantage compared to the Surface Pro, which at least is an actual Windows PC that doubles as a tablet. The Surface RT has more limited application, and is more likely to be used to augment a PC rather than replace it.

Still, the Surface RT is a solid device. It was good with Windows 8, and it will be even better with Windows 8.1. It comes with Office, and soon it will include Outlook as well. But now that Microsoft has launched Office Mobile for iPhone, and improved the capabilities of the Office Web apps for the iPad, Microsoft Office is much less of a factor in defining tablet choice.

So, what’s the sweet spot? $300—with the Touch keyboard cover included. With the reduced price of the Surface RT, that setup will still cost $470 right now, which is unlikely to sway the purchasing decision of an IT admin. If Microsoft throws in the Touch keyboard cover, though, that $350 starts to look much better as a mobile business tool, and if Microsoft adds in the cover and drops the price to $300, it would have a hard time keeping up with demand.

No comments
Posted at 04:31 |  by Unknown
At first glance, the Razer Edge Pro is indistinguishable from other Windows 8 tablets: It’s 2.2 pounds of matte black metal with a 10.1-inch screen and a single Windows button. But pick it up, and you'll immediately feel the heft in your hands. It's bulkier than the Surface Pro, and also runs much, much hotter.

That heat flows from the powerful components nestled inside. An Nvidia GPU and an Intel Core i7 CPU allow Razer's tablet to compete with similarly priced ultrabooks in terms of raw processing performance. The goal? To deliver no-exuses PC gaming in a handheld tablet form factor. Throw in a Gamepad Controller accessory, and the Edge Pro begins to approximate a console gaming experience, care of dual analog sticks, a D-pad and action buttons.

I haven't yet spent enough time with the tablet to know whether it delivers on its promise—look for our full review next week—but Razer's latest gaming hardware began to leave a strong first impression the moment I pulled it out of its packaging.

Playing PC games on a tablet is fantastic

The most important thing you need to know about the Razer Edge Pro is that it delivers in terms of frame rates and battery life. You can use it to play contemporary PC games at decent settings, and the battery lasts long enough to let you play for at least two to three hours at a stretch before you need to recharge. You can augment battery life with an extended battery pack, which Razer sells separately or as part of a Gamepad Controller bundle.
To use the Edge Pro for its intended purpose, the Gamepad Controller would seem near essential. Most PC games suck when you're relegated to touch gestures, so either a mouse/keyboard combo or a gamepad is essential. I spent a few hours playing Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider and XCOM while curled up on the couch with the Gamepad Controller resting on my lap. Being able to play complex PC games from the comfort of the couch is amazing, but it just doesn't work without the Gampad option.

Controlling PC games on a tablet is an exercise in compromise

At first blush, I was disappointed with the design of the Razer Edge Pro. It feels bulky and unwieldy—more like a prototype than a finished product. It’s heavier, thicker and harder to carry than the Surface Pro, weighing in at 2.25 pounds and measuring roughly 12 inches wide.
Snap the Edge into it's Gamepad accessory and you have a viable handheld gaming platform. But it's hard to use anywhere besides your couch.

Alone it’s not much of a burden, but—as mentioned earlier—it’s also not much of a gaming machine sans accessories. Insert the Edge Pro into it’s Gamepad chassis, and you get an excellent platform for 3D action games that's 15 inches wide, almost 4.5 pounds and nearly impossible to safely stow in a backpack or messenger bag. So, perversely, to make the Edge Pro shine as a mobile gaming device you have to render it practically immobile.

The screen disappoints

Razer built the Edge with a 10.1-inch IPS display bearing a native resolution of just 1366 by 768. It works well enough for browsing the web or playing games from the Windows Store—the Surface RT has the same 1366 by 768 resolution, after all—but it diminishes the fun of playing graphically intensive PC games or watching HD video. Indeed, the Edge Pro looks inferior next to the Surface Pro's vibrant 1920 by 1080 display. 

The Edge has a serviceable display, but it's not very vibrant and can't handle 1080p video. 
I didn't want to put the Razer Edge Pro down, but eventually I had to, because with the Gamepad attached I couldn't hold it steady for more than an hour before my arms turned to jelly (though, admittedly, I kept picking it back up). I've only had a few days with the Edge Pro, and there's still plenty of testing to be done. I'm going to put it through the PCWorld Lab's battery of benchmarking tests, hook it up to my PC and HDTV, and then see how it holds up during daily use. Look for a comprehensive review next week.

Razer Edge Pro: Our first look at a Windows 8 gaming tablet

At first glance, the Razer Edge Pro is indistinguishable from other Windows 8 tablets: It’s 2.2 pounds of matte black metal with a 10.1-inch screen and a single Windows button. But pick it up, and you'll immediately feel the heft in your hands. It's bulkier than the Surface Pro, and also runs much, much hotter.

That heat flows from the powerful components nestled inside. An Nvidia GPU and an Intel Core i7 CPU allow Razer's tablet to compete with similarly priced ultrabooks in terms of raw processing performance. The goal? To deliver no-exuses PC gaming in a handheld tablet form factor. Throw in a Gamepad Controller accessory, and the Edge Pro begins to approximate a console gaming experience, care of dual analog sticks, a D-pad and action buttons.

I haven't yet spent enough time with the tablet to know whether it delivers on its promise—look for our full review next week—but Razer's latest gaming hardware began to leave a strong first impression the moment I pulled it out of its packaging.

Playing PC games on a tablet is fantastic

The most important thing you need to know about the Razer Edge Pro is that it delivers in terms of frame rates and battery life. You can use it to play contemporary PC games at decent settings, and the battery lasts long enough to let you play for at least two to three hours at a stretch before you need to recharge. You can augment battery life with an extended battery pack, which Razer sells separately or as part of a Gamepad Controller bundle.
To use the Edge Pro for its intended purpose, the Gamepad Controller would seem near essential. Most PC games suck when you're relegated to touch gestures, so either a mouse/keyboard combo or a gamepad is essential. I spent a few hours playing Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider and XCOM while curled up on the couch with the Gamepad Controller resting on my lap. Being able to play complex PC games from the comfort of the couch is amazing, but it just doesn't work without the Gampad option.

Controlling PC games on a tablet is an exercise in compromise

At first blush, I was disappointed with the design of the Razer Edge Pro. It feels bulky and unwieldy—more like a prototype than a finished product. It’s heavier, thicker and harder to carry than the Surface Pro, weighing in at 2.25 pounds and measuring roughly 12 inches wide.
Snap the Edge into it's Gamepad accessory and you have a viable handheld gaming platform. But it's hard to use anywhere besides your couch.

Alone it’s not much of a burden, but—as mentioned earlier—it’s also not much of a gaming machine sans accessories. Insert the Edge Pro into it’s Gamepad chassis, and you get an excellent platform for 3D action games that's 15 inches wide, almost 4.5 pounds and nearly impossible to safely stow in a backpack or messenger bag. So, perversely, to make the Edge Pro shine as a mobile gaming device you have to render it practically immobile.

The screen disappoints

Razer built the Edge with a 10.1-inch IPS display bearing a native resolution of just 1366 by 768. It works well enough for browsing the web or playing games from the Windows Store—the Surface RT has the same 1366 by 768 resolution, after all—but it diminishes the fun of playing graphically intensive PC games or watching HD video. Indeed, the Edge Pro looks inferior next to the Surface Pro's vibrant 1920 by 1080 display. 

The Edge has a serviceable display, but it's not very vibrant and can't handle 1080p video. 
I didn't want to put the Razer Edge Pro down, but eventually I had to, because with the Gamepad attached I couldn't hold it steady for more than an hour before my arms turned to jelly (though, admittedly, I kept picking it back up). I've only had a few days with the Edge Pro, and there's still plenty of testing to be done. I'm going to put it through the PCWorld Lab's battery of benchmarking tests, hook it up to my PC and HDTV, and then see how it holds up during daily use. Look for a comprehensive review next week.

No comments
Posted at 03:49 |  by Unknown
Samsung’s latest Chromebook – the Series 3 XE303C12-A01US – is small, slim, and speedy. This little laptop weighs less than 2.5 pounds and packs a decent performance punch, assuming you’re comparing it to the right machines.

A laptop-shaped improvement to a tablet or smartphone

The Samsung Series 3 looks like a laptop, but it's not. It's equipped with a mobile processor and very little internal storage, and it runs the browser-based Chrome operating system instead of the Apple Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows platform. It performs more like a tablet or advanced smartphone than an ultraportable. If you’re looking to do much more than surf the web and create cloud-based content (via Google or another service), then this is not the laptop for you. But if you’re looking for a tablet with much better content-creation functionality--namely, an integrated keyboard--then the Samsung Chromebook is an appealing option.

Our review model, which costs $249.99 as configured, sports a 1.7GHz Samsung Exynos 5 dual-core ARM processor, which is the same mobile system-on-a-chip found in the Google Nexus 10 tablet. Like the Nexus 10, the Chromebook pairs the Exynos 5 with 2GB of memory and 16GB of hard drive space.

The Chromebook also sports built-in Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, two USB ports (one USB 3.0, one USB 2.0), a 3-in-1 card reader, and a headphone/microphone combination port. There’s also an HDMI-out port on the back of the machine. Samsung offers USB dongles for VGA-out and Ethernet (sold separately).

Fast performance compared to tablets

Because the Chromebook is technically a tablet, with a mobile system-on-a-chip and no discrete graphics card, we tested it using our tablet benchmark tests – Peacekeeper, SunSpider, and WebVizBench.

The Chromebook performs very well compared to tablets in all three of these tests. It scored 1233 on Futuremark’s Peacekeeper HTML5 browser test, which is more than twice the score of Apple’s iPad 3 (516). The Chromebook was also very fast on SunSpider, taking 0.69 seconds to complete the same JavaScript test that the iPad 3 took 1.78 seconds to complete, and that the fairly speedy Asus VivoTab RT took 1.03 seconds to complete. On WebVizBench, another HTML5 test, the Chromebook scored 5.4, slightly behind the Windows Surface RT tablet (6.9) and, surprisingly, the HTC Windows 8 phone (5.9).

The Chromebook also loads pages quickly. In our page-load test, it took just 7 seconds to load a page that took the Asus VivoTab RT 23.3 seconds to load.

Silvery design takes cues from MacBook Air

The Samsung Chromebook looks a lot like the 11-inch Apple MacBook Air. It’s thicker (0.8 inches to the MBA’s 0.68 inches) and slightly heavier (2.43 pounds to the MBA’s 2.38 pounds), and it’s made of plastic instead of Apple’s standard aluminum. However, it clearly took cues from Apple’s ultrathin, ultralight premium laptop, right down to the island-style black keyboard and smooth, button-less trackpad.

The Chromebook may be lightweight and made of plastic, but it feels very sturdy. When closed, the laptop feels solid, and when open, the hinge is practically unshakeable. Speaking of the hinge, that’s the only major eyesore on the machine: When the laptop is closed, the hinge juts up about a half-centimeter. This breaks up the otherwise clean, smooth lines of the machine.

The Chromebook sports a solid, matte-silver lid featuring both the Google Chrome logo (in the upper left corner) and the Samsung logo (left, center). Inside, the laptop is all matte-silver plastic, including a silver plastic bezel surrounding the machine’s 11.6-inch screen. There’s another Samsung logo below the screen. 

Keyboard built for Chrome, not Windows or Mac

The keyboard is still a full-size QWERTY keyboard, but Google and Samsung have modified the layout to better suit the Chrome experience. First, there’s no Windows or Apple key (after all, this isn’t a Windows or Apple computer), just larger Ctrl and Alt buttons. There’s also no Caps Lock key – instead, there’s a Search key that, when pressed, brings up a list of apps installed on the computer. This is sort of like the Windows key, since it essentially brings up the apps in a Start Menu-esque format.
The Samsung Series 3 sports a silvery design and an extremely sturdy hinge.

There’s also no Fn key. Instead of function keys along to the top of the keyboard, above the numbers, there are dedicated keys for various tasks. From left to right, you’ll find: Escape, Back, Forward, Refresh, Full Screen, Next Window, Brightness up/down, Mute, Volume up/down, and Power. This setup shouldn’t take too much getting used to if you’re a Mac person – MacBooks’ function keys are, by default, set to perform tasks instead of the typical F1, F2, etc.

The keyboard, which sports Chiclet-style keys, is fairly comfortable to type on, though it’s certainly not the best keyboard I’ve ever used. The keys offer somewhat light tactile feedback, which can be an issue if you’re typing quickly. The keys are also a bit small, though the keyboard itself is full-size.

Trackpad is a few features short

The Chromebook’s multi-touch-enabled trackpad sits below the keyboard. Similar to Apple trackpads, it has no discrete buttons, just one big, clickable pad. Unlike Apple’s trackpads, however, the one on the Series 3 lacks a setting for a physical right-click (that is, you can’t set it to right-click if you click in the lower-right corner). All right-clicks must be performed by tapping the pad with two fingers.

The trackpad supports some multi-touch gestures, such as two-finger scrolling. It does not support pinch-to-zoom, which is unfortunate considering the Chromebook’s screen is so small. The trackpad is comfortable, responsive, and otherwise easy to use.
Display could be brighter

The Chromebook’s display is adequate, considering the size and price of the system. The laptop sports a matte-finish LED display with a native resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels – the same resolution you’ll find on the 11-inch MacBook Air. This resolution is perfectly acceptable for an 11.6-inch screen, and images and text look crisp and clear. Color fidelity is fairly good, though some colors look a little washed-out when the screen is cranked up to its brightest setting.

That said, the screen's brightness could be an issue, considering this is designed for portability. The screen is 200 nits (a term for a unit of measured brightness). This is fine for basic indoor work, but I usually like at least 250 nits for working outdoors or in direct sunlight. Apple’s MacBook Air has a very bright screen, at 354 nits.

Video looks and sounds surprisingly good on the Chromebook, considering it has no discrete graphics card (and a mobile chip, at that). High-definition streaming video plays well, though darker scenes suffer from quite a bit of artifacting. Audio from the Chromebook’s two 1.5W stereo speakers sounds decently full and loud, and the headphone jack is clean. I wouldn’t make this your main video machine, but for casual watching and listening it works just fine.

Designed for the web-centric life

The Samsung Chromebook is designed for a user with very specific needs. Because it runs the Chrome OS, you can’t use traditional applications – you have to use web-based apps or apps that are built within the Google infrastructure.
Melissa RiofrioThe Chromebook comes with several apps built-in, including the Chrome browser, Google Maps, and YouTube.

The Chromebook comes with several apps built-in, including the Chrome web browser, Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Google Drive, and a calculator app. You can download additional apps, either paid or free, at the Chrome Web Store.

This Chromebook is really designed for people who do little more than surf the web and create documents and spreadsheets, and who want something light, portable, and with a physical keyboard. It only has 16GB of internal storage, but never fear: Chromebook users get 100GB of free Cloud Drive storage for two years.

While the Chromebook isn’t for everyone, it’s certainly a cheap and productive alternative to a similarly-equipped tablet. You don’t get a touchscreen, but you do get extra Cloud Drive storage, better performance, and a keyboard.

Samsung Chromebook 3: Cheaper, more productive alternative to a tablet

Samsung’s latest Chromebook – the Series 3 XE303C12-A01US – is small, slim, and speedy. This little laptop weighs less than 2.5 pounds and packs a decent performance punch, assuming you’re comparing it to the right machines.

A laptop-shaped improvement to a tablet or smartphone

The Samsung Series 3 looks like a laptop, but it's not. It's equipped with a mobile processor and very little internal storage, and it runs the browser-based Chrome operating system instead of the Apple Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows platform. It performs more like a tablet or advanced smartphone than an ultraportable. If you’re looking to do much more than surf the web and create cloud-based content (via Google or another service), then this is not the laptop for you. But if you’re looking for a tablet with much better content-creation functionality--namely, an integrated keyboard--then the Samsung Chromebook is an appealing option.

Our review model, which costs $249.99 as configured, sports a 1.7GHz Samsung Exynos 5 dual-core ARM processor, which is the same mobile system-on-a-chip found in the Google Nexus 10 tablet. Like the Nexus 10, the Chromebook pairs the Exynos 5 with 2GB of memory and 16GB of hard drive space.

The Chromebook also sports built-in Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, two USB ports (one USB 3.0, one USB 2.0), a 3-in-1 card reader, and a headphone/microphone combination port. There’s also an HDMI-out port on the back of the machine. Samsung offers USB dongles for VGA-out and Ethernet (sold separately).

Fast performance compared to tablets

Because the Chromebook is technically a tablet, with a mobile system-on-a-chip and no discrete graphics card, we tested it using our tablet benchmark tests – Peacekeeper, SunSpider, and WebVizBench.

The Chromebook performs very well compared to tablets in all three of these tests. It scored 1233 on Futuremark’s Peacekeeper HTML5 browser test, which is more than twice the score of Apple’s iPad 3 (516). The Chromebook was also very fast on SunSpider, taking 0.69 seconds to complete the same JavaScript test that the iPad 3 took 1.78 seconds to complete, and that the fairly speedy Asus VivoTab RT took 1.03 seconds to complete. On WebVizBench, another HTML5 test, the Chromebook scored 5.4, slightly behind the Windows Surface RT tablet (6.9) and, surprisingly, the HTC Windows 8 phone (5.9).

The Chromebook also loads pages quickly. In our page-load test, it took just 7 seconds to load a page that took the Asus VivoTab RT 23.3 seconds to load.

Silvery design takes cues from MacBook Air

The Samsung Chromebook looks a lot like the 11-inch Apple MacBook Air. It’s thicker (0.8 inches to the MBA’s 0.68 inches) and slightly heavier (2.43 pounds to the MBA’s 2.38 pounds), and it’s made of plastic instead of Apple’s standard aluminum. However, it clearly took cues from Apple’s ultrathin, ultralight premium laptop, right down to the island-style black keyboard and smooth, button-less trackpad.

The Chromebook may be lightweight and made of plastic, but it feels very sturdy. When closed, the laptop feels solid, and when open, the hinge is practically unshakeable. Speaking of the hinge, that’s the only major eyesore on the machine: When the laptop is closed, the hinge juts up about a half-centimeter. This breaks up the otherwise clean, smooth lines of the machine.

The Chromebook sports a solid, matte-silver lid featuring both the Google Chrome logo (in the upper left corner) and the Samsung logo (left, center). Inside, the laptop is all matte-silver plastic, including a silver plastic bezel surrounding the machine’s 11.6-inch screen. There’s another Samsung logo below the screen. 

Keyboard built for Chrome, not Windows or Mac

The keyboard is still a full-size QWERTY keyboard, but Google and Samsung have modified the layout to better suit the Chrome experience. First, there’s no Windows or Apple key (after all, this isn’t a Windows or Apple computer), just larger Ctrl and Alt buttons. There’s also no Caps Lock key – instead, there’s a Search key that, when pressed, brings up a list of apps installed on the computer. This is sort of like the Windows key, since it essentially brings up the apps in a Start Menu-esque format.
The Samsung Series 3 sports a silvery design and an extremely sturdy hinge.

There’s also no Fn key. Instead of function keys along to the top of the keyboard, above the numbers, there are dedicated keys for various tasks. From left to right, you’ll find: Escape, Back, Forward, Refresh, Full Screen, Next Window, Brightness up/down, Mute, Volume up/down, and Power. This setup shouldn’t take too much getting used to if you’re a Mac person – MacBooks’ function keys are, by default, set to perform tasks instead of the typical F1, F2, etc.

The keyboard, which sports Chiclet-style keys, is fairly comfortable to type on, though it’s certainly not the best keyboard I’ve ever used. The keys offer somewhat light tactile feedback, which can be an issue if you’re typing quickly. The keys are also a bit small, though the keyboard itself is full-size.

Trackpad is a few features short

The Chromebook’s multi-touch-enabled trackpad sits below the keyboard. Similar to Apple trackpads, it has no discrete buttons, just one big, clickable pad. Unlike Apple’s trackpads, however, the one on the Series 3 lacks a setting for a physical right-click (that is, you can’t set it to right-click if you click in the lower-right corner). All right-clicks must be performed by tapping the pad with two fingers.

The trackpad supports some multi-touch gestures, such as two-finger scrolling. It does not support pinch-to-zoom, which is unfortunate considering the Chromebook’s screen is so small. The trackpad is comfortable, responsive, and otherwise easy to use.
Display could be brighter

The Chromebook’s display is adequate, considering the size and price of the system. The laptop sports a matte-finish LED display with a native resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels – the same resolution you’ll find on the 11-inch MacBook Air. This resolution is perfectly acceptable for an 11.6-inch screen, and images and text look crisp and clear. Color fidelity is fairly good, though some colors look a little washed-out when the screen is cranked up to its brightest setting.

That said, the screen's brightness could be an issue, considering this is designed for portability. The screen is 200 nits (a term for a unit of measured brightness). This is fine for basic indoor work, but I usually like at least 250 nits for working outdoors or in direct sunlight. Apple’s MacBook Air has a very bright screen, at 354 nits.

Video looks and sounds surprisingly good on the Chromebook, considering it has no discrete graphics card (and a mobile chip, at that). High-definition streaming video plays well, though darker scenes suffer from quite a bit of artifacting. Audio from the Chromebook’s two 1.5W stereo speakers sounds decently full and loud, and the headphone jack is clean. I wouldn’t make this your main video machine, but for casual watching and listening it works just fine.

Designed for the web-centric life

The Samsung Chromebook is designed for a user with very specific needs. Because it runs the Chrome OS, you can’t use traditional applications – you have to use web-based apps or apps that are built within the Google infrastructure.
Melissa RiofrioThe Chromebook comes with several apps built-in, including the Chrome browser, Google Maps, and YouTube.

The Chromebook comes with several apps built-in, including the Chrome web browser, Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Google Drive, and a calculator app. You can download additional apps, either paid or free, at the Chrome Web Store.

This Chromebook is really designed for people who do little more than surf the web and create documents and spreadsheets, and who want something light, portable, and with a physical keyboard. It only has 16GB of internal storage, but never fear: Chromebook users get 100GB of free Cloud Drive storage for two years.

While the Chromebook isn’t for everyone, it’s certainly a cheap and productive alternative to a similarly-equipped tablet. You don’t get a touchscreen, but you do get extra Cloud Drive storage, better performance, and a keyboard.

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