We previously heard a gunshot across the bow of the good ship Chromebook at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in mid-July. Now we get to see the calibre of some of Microsoft's ammunition. Information regarding the US$199 HP Stream 14 laptop has been revealed via an official data sheet unearthed by Mobile Geeks (via GigaOM).
About a month ago we first saw the Windows vs Chromebook strategy outlined by Microsoft COO Kevin Turner. With Microsoft making Windows cheaper, or even free, to hardware partners they in turn should be able to make entry level laptops that easily compete with Google Chromebooks in the hardware stakes while offering Microsoft's OS and cloud services. The most eye catching slide at the MWPC said Microsoft intended to redefine the value category and trumpeted "6 things a Chromebook can't do" – for comparable cash outlay.
Not much more than a week later we saw HP launch a dual-core AMD Mullins powered laptop, the HP Pavilion 10, with a 10-inch touchscreen and 500GB HDD for $249. Now HP has gone bigger and even cheaper with its HP Stream 14.
HP Stream 14 Specifications
You can see from the above that the HP Stream 14 offers the AMD A4 Micro-6400T which is a quad core processor running at 1.6GHz. It has a TDP of 4.5W. Here's a comparison against the AMD dual-core E1 Micro-6200T processor in the HP Pavilion 10. Also making the HP Stream 14 more like the average Chromebook HP has kitted it out with a smaller fixed storage device, at 32GB or 64GB, but a faster flash memory based drive rather than an HDD. The 2GB of DDR3-133MHz RAM is not upgradeable. The HP Stream 14's non-touch 14-inch screen is not that posh just a 1366 x 768 display.
The next part of the spec list reveals the networking and ports built into this laptop. There's decent connectivity, ports and features on offer including; 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI output, 1x USB 3.0 ports, 2x USB 2.0 ports, an SDXC card reader, four speakers with Beats Audio, and a 720p webcam. HP has installed a 3-cell 32Whr battery. The HP Stream 14 measures 343 x 241 x 17.8mm and weighs 1.76Kg (3.9lbs).
Just like Google does with its Chromebooks, Microsoft has augmented the small-ish built-in storage quota with a big lump of cloud storage: a 100GB OneDrive boost for 2 years. Windows 8.1 with Bing is the OS here, as you will have guessed.
It will be interesting to see what other manufacturers come up with at this low end price in the next few months.
