HP Stream ($199): Comes w/ Office 365, Windows 8.1, etc -- Chromebook Killer?

[MoonSpot]

I don't find it very fair to be pissed off at them trying to save money by soldering RAM on when the price point is this low... On a $1500 device, yeah it should be user replaceable, but even then most high end ultrabooks are soldered on now as well. Saves money, and makes the device more thin. 

Well sorry you feel that way, but that's just how it is when looking at items from the consumers perspective.  I've little interest in accommodating to manufactures desires, needs or problems, I've got my own.  You'll note I did not mention the CPU as being irremovable(GPUs rarely are so no point talking about that) and accepted the sub-par storage, but keeping the ram at bare minimum(2GB on 64-bit) for the life of the machine is a bit much for me to swallow.  Allowing for upgradable RAM, while it does affect cost and the profile, both are quite marginal and one corner too many being cut for it to get my money. 

Unfortunately "ultrabook" doesn't mean an uncompromising powerhouse but are all about getting laptops to be as thin and low power as possible(recently defined by intel), so I'm not sure where you were going with that.

 

 

Budget devices are NEVER intended for heavy users.

 

Although OneNote can be pretty beefy, I wouldn't label having it and a browser open the domain of heavy users.  It's what any student would use on a regular basis.  If students aren't a target demographic for these, the colours they're available in would suggests it is, then that still leaves it as a FB machine for the grandmas and grandpas out there with 20/20 vision, and for light demand white collars (reception, accountants, data entry, etc)

 

Either way talking about a product doesn't necessarily equate to hating on it, I was thinking about buying it and figuring out if it would be worth it.  Which is why the RAM "chaps my arse", it's a deal breaker that disappoints me.

[Simmytu]

Well a $200 laptop is definitely not sounding great especially from a company (Tbh almost every laptop that's under $600 has had some terrible compromises to be made) that's famous for it's "you get for what you pay for". What I personally think about is that HP and/ or Microsoft want to compete within the price range of Chromebooks, which is great for students like me and a lot of you guys :-D

But I still have some trust issues with the words laptop and cheap. Hopefully HP doesn't "screw" that much up and deliver something that isn't disposable after 1 year of usage, true story happened to our teacher year or two ago

 

Since this topic is going a bit off topic, as usual:

Haha no this is just pulling it in and out of his backpack and using the CD drive vigorously. Maybe one drop too. The lid problem happened when it got stuck. He tried to open it but the hinge jammed it self. When he finally pried it open the bottom part of the bezel just snapped clean off and stayed attached in the stuck position.

Wow, that's one of the weirdest story that I've read today about HP (and laptops in general). My aunt has bought a HP Pavilion laptop with an A8 with dual graphics and such (it was decent spec'd laptop for it's price) and it has been running for about a year and a half now. The only thing I think that HP has screwed some big time here is it's preloaded Windows 8 image. Oh my.. I've never seen such unstable OS in quite a while. Issues like the scaling doesn't work or that one security update made the entire device unusable was actually the worst yet and I had to fix it .

[TAK]

.

[fojacko]

That's a good deal... I guess it's never coming to the UK then

 

Also, guessing the tablet is Windows RT.

[TAK]

.

[fojacko]

UK is a good question, as is Europe in general and the price will of course be higher as it always is.

 

I don't think it will be RT, I don't think Microsoft wants to promote that anymore, I would think it's full Windows 8.

 

EDIT: Yep, powered by Intel chips, so RT is out.

 

wow, that makes it even more of a better deal. Even if the tablet was £175 here in the uk, it'd still be a good deal for a windows tablet.

[DigitalHermit]

Looks cool... Can't wait for it to hit the local market... Hopefully before December since it might make the perfect Christmas gift for some folks...

[terrytek]

Great, not even cheap netbooks can have HDDs.

[DarrenP]

I'm always for budget options, I think what HP is doing here is really cool. 

 

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3

 

Where to buy:

Amazon

Review

 

HP is offering several budget options for students with their new Stream line of netbooks. There will be the Stream 11 ($199), Stream 13 ($229) and the Stream 14 ($299) each with specs and features that increase respectively.

 

 

 

 

The specs

The 11.6" model

• Intel Celeron N2840
• 2 GB DDR3L SDRAM
• 32 GB Solid-State Drive and 1TB OneDrive Cloud Storage for one year
• 11.6-Inch Screen
• Windows 8.1, 8.25-hour battery life

 

13.3" model

 

• Intel Celeron N2840 Processor
• 2.0 GB DDR3L SDRAM
• 32 GB Solid-State Drive and 1TB OneDrive Cloud Storage for one year
• 13.3-Inch Screen, Intel HD graphics
• Windows 8.1, 7.75-hour battery life

14" model

• AMD Quad Core A4 6400t 1.0 GHz (Up to 1.6 Ghz Turbo)(2 MB Cache)
• 2 GB DDR3L SDRAM
• 32 GB Solid-State Drive and 100GB OneDrive Cloud Storage for 2 years
• 14.0-Inch Screen, AMD Radeon R3 graphics, four Beats Audio speakers,Keyboard island with clickable trackpad, brushed aluminum metal deck and aluminum top cover.
• Windows 8.1, 6.5-hour battery life

 

I think it offers more than a chrome book in my honest opinion. 

Holy balls. That's like exactly what i want for class. For my programming. 

[zanduh]

That tablet is pretty nice for 100 dollars

[brownninja97]

but the resolution is a lot worse.

[WereCat]

but the resolution is a lot worse.

It is just a number.

[terrytek]

It is just a number.

Stop the Ubisoft shit already. We get it, it's shit.

[Misanthrope]

Again....HP....and a cheap HP product at that....

 

[WereCat]

Stop the Ubisoft shit already. We get it, it's shit.

I did it first time and I immediately get burned

I am terribly sorry sir.

 

1333x768 is bad but it is what most notebooks have anyway so for $200 it really doesent matter.

[terrytek]

I did it first time and I immediately get burned

I am terribly sorry sir.

 

1333x768 is bad but it is what most notebooks have anyway so for $200 it really doesent matter.

Oh whoops. But it's just overused here. sorry.

[Misanthrope]

the reviews say otherwise. 

 

And I don't think HP would be above cherry picking the best sample machines to send as review samples. Sorry but I just don't trust HP no matter how good they claim it is and there is really nothing special here other than MS throwing away software for free here. My best recommendation would be for a PC builder that absolutely needs office as well since he could transfer the license to a decent machine and use that year subscription. But it's not that good of a value like that anyway.

[zanduh]

the reviews say otherwise. 

 

I've owned two hp ultrabooks

They fall apart within 3 years, almost literally. However if you're comfortable disassembling laptops it's usually pretty easy fixes

[Misanthrope]

read the amazon reviews. 

 

Oh Amazon reviews? Well such an infallible and reliable source surely changes everything let me get my wallet!

[zanduh]

the average lifepsan of a laptop is 3-5 years.

 

i'm not praising HP for this, but you gotta cut them some slack. for $200, this isn't a bad option for a student on a tight budget

 

Oh no absolutely I'm actually buying one for my brother in uni right now

I'm just saying that the hatred HP gets is merited from my experience

[LukeTim]

It's Windows. It'll be sluggish as hell on that hardware.

[Misanthrope]

You posted the news and you like it but you seem unusually adamant at defending it and debating people on it. Sorry to break it to you but you're not going to change decades of disappointment and preconceived notions about HP with a couple of benchmarks and amazon reviews.

[cesrai]

I'm always for budget options, I think what HP is doing here is really cool. 

 

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3

 

Where to buy:

Amazon

Review #1

Review #2

 

HP is offering several budget options for students with their new Stream line of netbooks. There will be the Stream 11 ($199), Stream 13 ($229) and the Stream 14 ($299) each with specs and features that increase respectively.

 

 

 

 

The specs

The 11.6" model

• Intel Celeron N2840
• 2 GB DDR3L SDRAM
• 32 GB Solid-State Drive and 1TB OneDrive Cloud Storage for one year
• 11.6-Inch Screen
• Windows 8.1, 8.25-hour battery life

 

13.3" model

 

• Intel Celeron N2840 Processor
• 2.0 GB DDR3L SDRAM
• 32 GB Solid-State Drive and 1TB OneDrive Cloud Storage for one year
• 13.3-Inch Screen, Intel HD graphics
• Windows 8.1, 7.75-hour battery life

14" model

• AMD Quad Core A4 6400t 1.0 GHz (Up to 1.6 Ghz Turbo)(2 MB Cache)
• 2 GB DDR3L SDRAM
• 32 GB Solid-State Drive and 100GB OneDrive Cloud Storage for 2 years
• 14.0-Inch Screen, AMD Radeon R3 graphics, four Beats Audio speakers,Keyboard island with clickable trackpad, brushed aluminum metal deck and aluminum top cover.
• Windows 8.1, 6.5-hour battery life

 

I think it offers more than a chrome book in my honest opinion. 

 

EDIT:

Based on reviews, the 14" model is pretty sluggish due to the APU (no real surprise there), but the 11 and 13 inch are pretty snappy (both have intel chipsets...coincidence? Lol). 

Set FONT COLOR TO AUTO AUTO AUTO AUTO.

[cesrai]

sorry, all fixed I hope

Yep thanks.

[qwertywarrior]

might buy the 11  inch of the screen is great