Thin, easy and affordable: Google's Chromebooks come to India

If you haven't noticed it, the browser is the most-used software on your computer. And this little detail has also caught Google's attention. So, for the past couple of years the search giant has been encouraging manufacturers to build computers that pretty much have just the browser which acts as the operating system on the device.

So you will open a Chromebook to the Chrome OS with its multiple layers of security, cloud storage, and the most popular Google products built-in. Since it won't have to boot up software and interfaces, this new computer will be much thinner, ready to go online in seconds, secure of machine failures as everything will be on the cloud and much more secure. They also have much better battery life, often upwards of eight hours.

But this also means that the device will need to be connected to the Internet to do most functions. If the limited internet penetration in India put off Google from bringing the earlier versions of the Chromebook here, the recent explosion in the number of connections seems to have spurred new interest in the market.

So from October 17, Indians will be able to buy at least two Chromebook models - the Acer C720 Chromebook and the HP Chromebook 14.

Unlike the earlier versions available in many markets since June 2011, these new devices are very affordable. The Acer C720 is priced at Rs 22,999 while the HP one is costlier at Rs 26,990.


This price range is expected to make these devices very popular in emerging markets like India. It also helps that many of these first-time buyers are already exposed to Google's Android operating system.

As both these computers have just 16GB of internal storage, buyers will also get 100GB of free storage is for 2 years. Flipkart has already started accepting pre-orders for these Chromebooks.