Google announced today they are going to be releasing a touchscreen Chrome laptop as early as next week. As I started looking over the specs and the prices, I can’t help but think of Apple. For $1300 (Wi-Fi) or $1449 (LTE due in April) you get a laptop with a 12.85-inch touchscreen with 2560 x 1700 resolution, an Intel i5 (dual-core) 1.8 GHz processor, 4 GB of RAM, 2 USB 2.0 ports and a 32 GB Solid-State Drive and 3-years free 1 TB Cloud Storage. If it weren’t for the fact it runs the Chrome OS, I would think this had to be a Mac. For $1300 I would expect an Intel i7 (quad-core) 2.4 GHz processor, 15-inch display, 8 GB of RAM, USB 3.0 (which has been a standard since November 2008) and around 200 GB SSD plus the touchscreen. Looking over at Amazon the closest to these exact specs was a Lenovo Thinkpad touchscreen (12.5 inches with a 1366 x 768 pixels resolution) Windows 8 laptop with a 500 GB hard drive and 24 GB SSD (instead of just a 32 GB SSD) and 2 USB 3.0 ports for $750.

I just don’t see these flying of the shelves at that price. People who are going to pay $1300 for a laptop are going to expect it to be able to do a lot, not just look good. The 32 GB SSD drive and Chrome OS are going to limit that. There is no word on how much space the Chrome OS takes up. Not to mention that this machine and the Lenovo Thinkpad do not have a built-in optical drive. So you will need to get an external DVD drive which is going to leave you with one open USB port, if you want to install software locally from a DVD. Granted an external DVD writer is going to set you back $20-50 depending on speed and most are USB 2.0 only. Don’t forget, the LTE version is not just another $150 for the machine, but you will also have to pay monthly carrier service fees (as low as $10 a month per device on some carriers).

via Tom’s Hardware