HP to lead the netbook comeback with its Stream 14 notebook

[Shawn Knight]

Last month we got word that Microsoft was going on the offensive and that we could expect to see the netbook make a return by the end of the year. That prophecy is one step closer to becoming a reality today as a leaked data sheet from HP outlines a 14-inch Windows notebook with a $199 price tag.

As the name suggests, the HP Stream 14 features a 14-inch display operating at 1,366 x 768 - much like what is currently found on Chromebooks. Under the hood is a quad-core AMD A4 Micro-6400T chip clocked at 1.6GHz, Radeon R3 graphics, 2GB of memory and either 32GB or 64GB of onboard storage.

The system has a decent amount of connectivity options as well with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, three USB ports, HDMI out, an SDXC card reader and a webcam all included.

Naturally, the Stream 14 will ship with Windows 8.1 preinstalled. And as an added bonus, Microsoft is throwing in 100GB of free cloud storage via OneDrive - good for two years. It all sounds a bit familiar, no?

No word yet on when the Stream 14 will make its official debut although Microsoft revealed last month that a Windows 8 machine from HP would be ready this holiday season. We were also told at the time that Acer and Toshiba are working on devices in the $250 range powered by Intel Celeron processors.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/57769-hp-to-lead-the-netbook-comeback-with-its-stream-14-notebook.html

 

[Gaara]

Deal!!!

 

[Guest]

Yeah!!!

 

[m4a4]

Meh, I don't like HP as a brand. Always seems to easily break in annoying ways...

 

[Guest]

The picture is of a samsung laptop

 

[Guest]

Arent netbooks dead already and replaced by tablets?
microsoft should just push all that connectivity into tablets/docks

 

[ET3D]

Arent netbooks dead already and replaced by tablets?

Calling a 14" laptop a netbook is somewhat strange, but 'netbook' was never well defined, so I guess it's possible to fit this laptop into some definition of 'netbook'. Still confusing, apparently.

There are things tablets aren't good enough for and laptops are, especially 14" laptops, which are much more comfortable to type on.

Still, in the long run I think it would make more sense to have a (wirelessly) dockable tablet than tablet + cheap laptop. At the end of the day though that won't save tons of money, so there's a chance that the laptop will have its own minimum processing specs, like this one.

 

[Guest]

Looks good, obviously it's not going to be a powerhouse at $199 I'm surprised they snuck an SSD and a quad core CPU into it, though I can see that paltry 2GB of RAM becoming a problem. I'm glad they didn't settle for an atom.

 

[Kibaruk]

As long as this is light I can see a market for it, specially at that price point.

Now, if they make it into the 12" form factor I'm totally in.

This sounds more like a "net"book that before when they were small size entry level notebooks. They began like "net"books with the EEE offering from Asus but quickly turned into -again- small sized entry level notebooks with hdd.

 

[Guest]

With Windows 8 it will be sloooooowwww!

 

[Kibaruk]

With Windows 8 it will be sloooooowwww!

It's fast enough for the tasks it will be used with a ssd and 2 gigs of ram.

 

[Guest]

With Windows 8 it will be sloooooowwww!

Funny you'd say that, everyone can gripe about the metro UI and such but Windows 8 performance is solid, it boots up faster than 7 and uses less memory. I can attest that my Windows 8.1 laptop actually feels more responsive at times than my beefier Windows 7 desktop.

 

[Guest]

That's an eMMC drive, not SSD. Waaaay slower than SSD. You also won't have much space left, especially on the 32GB model. Windows install + swap file + applications + updates (watch that winsxs folder grow). ChromeOS is totally optimized for low power devices. It's updates are small and silent, and even 16GB is fine for most things. Netbooks caused a lot of damage in the 'race to the bottom' mentaility vendors had. Microsoft may feel they have no choice but to compete with Google at the low end, but it's not a place MS want to be.