Cost

Acer $349 & Samsung $429 for their WiFi models.

awesome. thanks. I was afraid they were going to be really expensive

Well, that is a little expensive, considering that that's basically what you'd pay for a more-or-less comparable Windows 7 machine. At very least, since Chrome is a free OS, it should be cheaper by the $50 bucks or so of the cost of those machines that goes to the Windows license. I'd much prefer these to be $200-$250 machines, and I think that would help ChromeOS take off a lot.

Perhaps street prices will change over time. However, I'd suggest that a Windows PC priced at $349 to $429 is (likely) under-powered for many of the things people want to do. If one says that the Windows PC at that price will be used only for its browser, then I'd ask about managing that PC's malware protection, disk cleanup, defrag, bit-rot, etc. I've been using a Cr-48 since Dec, 2010 and it is a radically different computing experience from either the high-powered or under-powered Windows PC.

I wonder why there is such a big price difference between brands. I would have thought the Acer would have been the more expensive one, though. Acer is a good brand!

bells-n-whistles said:

I wonder why there is such a big price difference between brands. I would have thought the Acer would have been the more expensive one, though. Acer is a good brand!

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Are you referring to the $80 difference between the $349 Acer and the $429 Samsung? That price delta seems reasonable for the screen size and media reader differences.

Will wait until August to purchase a netbook, then look for best value for the money. Reliability is more important to me than a close difference in cost. Good luck to the chromebook.