HP Is Joining the Google Chromebox for Meetings Party
Just yesterday, Google announced its first foray into enterprise videoconferencing with the "Chromebox for meetings" set of hardware and software, based on the recently announced Asus Chromebox. Now HP has announced it's joining the Chrome OS videoconferencing wave this spring with its own Chromebox.
The HP Chromebox looks a lot like the Asus hardware, except with rounded corners and availability in four nice-looking colors. HP's announcement -- likely prematurely made due to the attention Google's "Chromebox for meetings" was getting -- didn't include very many details, but here's what the company has disclosed.
The HP Chromebox will be available in Snow White, Twinkle Black, Smoke Silver and Ocean Turquoise -- a selection familiar to HP Chromebook 14 users - and will be similar to the size of Asus's Chromebox, though specific dimensions weren't disclosed, according to GigaOm. However, HP said that its Chromebox will be small enough to place in a travel bag, and is VESA mountable to walls, the back of computer monitors or HDTVs, just like the Asus variant.
HP also disclosed that, similar to the Asus Chromebox, the HP machine will feature an HDMI port, a DisplayPort, and four USB 3.0 ports. Also, the HP Chromebox will feature the beefed-up Intel Haswell Core i7 processor. Conflicting reports have made it unclear whether the Core i7 variant of the Asus Chromebox will be available in the U.S. or only outside - or if its availability is only through Google's enterprise "Chromebox for meetings" program. But the HP Core i7 Chromebox will be coming to the U.S., so those looking to pick one up have something to look forward to this spring.
HP hasn't said what the price will be for its Chromebox, which will reportedly be "available this spring." Asus's Chromebox is available for as little as $179, making pricing pretty competitive, but that under $200 figure only applies to the most basic Asus Chromebox that runs a Haswell Celeron processor. The company hasn't disclosed what the price will be for its middle-of-the-road Core i3 Chromebox variant.
If the HP Chromebox wants to compete in the "Chromebox for meetings" market, it will have to be priced close to the $999 that the Asus Chromebox bundle costs and feature similar hardware and software.
Asus's "Chromebox for meetings," which was announced yesterday, comes with an Intel Core i7 Haswell processor, 4GB of RAM, a 16GB solid state storage drive (with more storage on Google Drive), HDMI and DisplayPort sockets, four USB 3.0 ports, Bluetooth 4.0, an SD card reader, Ethernet, and dual-band WiFi a/b/g/n. The package also comes with a Full HD 1080p camera, an omni-directional microphone/speaker combination, a remote control with a full qwerty keyboard on the back, and tons of Google Cloud and teleconferencing services included.
HP's blog doesn't specify other, cheaper variants of its forthcoming Chromebox, but it specifies that "there's also a version of our Chromebox that is Chromebox for meetings" with the Core i7 processor, implicitly stating that less high-powered (and cheaper) HP Chromebox variants are on the way as well.
What do you think? Do Chromeboxes look like a good deal, and does it matter to you if it comes from HP, Asus, or Dell -- which is also expected to release its own Chromebox this year? Let us know in the comment section.
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