News - HP Stream laptop's price tag $100 higher than expected

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Not $199, as trumpeted by Microsoft COO Kevin Turner but $299, as launched by HP.

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Read more.

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PC World magazine reports that the 14-inch HP Stream has now belatedly shown up and is priced at $300 upwards, depending upon configuration.

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If that US$300 doesn't get directly translated to £300 then it's not a disaster - since a quick Google of the current exchange rate and adding VAT gives £223, which is higher than I'd like, but still not ridiculous.

£199 inc VAT would be a good price point to hit with this - especially with Christmas coming up.

On the other hand, if the US$300 gets converted at 1:1, and then you add VAT you get £360, which'll get you an A8 or i3 powered "conventional" laptop from HP (prices taken from PC World), in which case I'll argue that the Stream will fail.

Big "if" there, though, crossy.

But even if it does, it just went from "very interesting" to "a bit ho-hum" for me.

Re: Crossy/Saracen. My thoughts exactly – at sub-£200, this was shiny. If the price goes to anywhere near a full laptop, I wouldn't consider it.

Thing is, in the article's first link, we have Acer and Toshiba notebooks at $249. The whole point of the Stream was to undercut these, at the "magical" $199 price point. What good is a flagship low-cost laptop if it costs more than the current best-sellers?

Or perhaps it was nothing more than an overblown statement made on stage by Kevin Turner to try and (in the short-term, at least) dent Google's creep in to notebook territory by making people hold off to get cheaper Windows laptops, that backfired when HP couldn't deliver what MS told us it could, despite whatever partnership/subsidy HP was receiving for this promotion. Yep, that sounds about right for the corporate world (which is a sad statement in and of itself).

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Originally Posted by MaverickWill

Thing is, in the article's first link, we have Acer and Toshiba notebooks at $249. The whole point of the Stream was to undercut these, at the "magical" $199 price point. What good is a flagship low-cost laptop if it costs more than the current best-sellers?

Or perhaps it was nothing more than an overblown statement made on stage by Kevin Turner to try and (in the short-term, at least) dent Google's creep in to notebook territory by making people hold off to get cheaper Windows laptops, that backfired when HP couldn't deliver what MS told us it could, despite whatever partnership/subsidy HP was receiving for this promotion. Yep, that sounds about right for the corporate world (which is a sad statement in and of itself).

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You're probably right in that Stream is an attack on Chromebooks (a product that I still can't see the usage case for). On the other hand that $199 price point is, when you look at it, a VERY aggressive one. Looking at the various BoM costings around, the Stream laptop is basically being made at a loss at best, or at least at minimal profit.

Then again, we should maybe hold fire on condemning it as lost cause until we get a firm price in the UK.

Chromebooks aren't really good value anymore.

With the likes of the ASUS T100 offering a full windows 8 tablet with keyboard dock, and proper usb ports etc @ £230

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Originally Posted by Brewster0101

Chromebooks aren't really good value anymore.
With the likes of the ASUS T100 offering a full windows 8 tablet with keyboard dock, and proper usb ports etc @ £230

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Very true, (hence my comment about not seeing a niche for Chromebooks).