News - HP expands its Stream range to include a $199 laptop

[HEXUS]

Two versions of this Stream laptop and two new Stream Windows tablets are launched.

Read more.

[lumireleon]

$99 sounds affordable

[shaithis]

I can see the blue ones being quite popular!

$199 for a dual-core celery (damn, not since the 300A days have I used that word to describe an Intel CPU ), high res display, 32GB flash etc does seem really good, especially IF we get it at £150 here (probably will be £200 though)

The one thing I cannot find on their site....RAM capacity.

[Unique]

the question is how much in real money and can you upgrade the HDD/SSD and RAM easily.

[crossy]

$199 for a dual-core celery (damn, not since the 300A days have I used that word to describe an Intel CPU ), high res display, 32GB flash etc does seem really good, especially IF we get it at £150 here (probably will be £200 though)

The one thing I cannot find on their site....RAM capacity.

According to this Engadget article it's the standard 2GB RAM, well "standard" for these low end Windows laptops and some tablets.

When I get a minute I'll see if there's any other info available on the HP intranet - apart from anything else I'd be interested to find out what the connectivity options are, especially if there's a uSD slot to expand the storage. Shame that storage and, more especially, RAM isn't upgradable.

[jimbouk]

high res display

I wonder if "HD screen" means 720p rather than 1080p? Both the 7" and 8" tablets (and my 4.5" phone) have "HD screens" as well, would prefer a few more pixels even on an 11" laptop.

[cheesemp]

Miss read the name as steam and was expecting a gaming laptop when I clicked on the link!

Got to be honest I'd rather spend another ~£20 (after cashback) and get something like this instead if I was looking for a browsing/word processing laptop. If I want a laptop screen space is all important. I'd rather have a tablet at 10" (like my old ASUS transformer) and plug in a keyboard in the rare event I need one.

[crossy]

the question is how much in real money and can you upgrade the HDD/SSD and RAM easily.

Spec says "flash storage", which I'm assuming is eMMC, so soldered onto the board and therefore non-upgradable. Similar story with the RAM, although I've not seen any of these boxes (or any service manuals) so can't be sure.

Sub $200 price point and you want upgradability too? Sheesh, some people are never satisfied!

Joking aside, Microsoft (and HP I guess) have been pretty clear that these "Netbook v2.0" aren't laptops and will be hardware-restricted so they don't take sales from the "proper" laptops. So if you want upgradeability then it'd be a Pavilion rather than a Stream I'm afraid. Good device though perhaps for the kids or for stuffing into a ruckie.

[Jowsey]

Spec says "flash storage", which I'm assuming is eMMC, so soldered onto the board and therefore non-upgradable. Similar story with the RAM, although I've not seen any of these boxes (or any service manuals) so can't be sure.

Sub $200 price point and you want upgradability too? Sheesh, some people are never satisfied!

Joking aside, Microsoft (and HP I guess) have been pretty clear that these "Netbook v2.0" aren't laptops and will be hardware-restricted so they don't take sales from the "proper" laptops. So if you want upgradeability then it'd be a Pavilion rather than a Stream I'm afraid. Good device though perhaps for the kids or for stuffing into a ruckie.

It's not un-heard of to be able to upgrade RAM on these kinds of laptops, my girlfriends chromebook has soldered eMMC but upgradeable RAM.

[TheAnimus]

Wait a second.... Wait a second....

and are again bundled with Microsoft Office 365 Personal and 1TB of OneDrive online storage for a year.

I pay £50 per year for 365 Personal.... Or I could pay $99 and have a tablet and it free. What gives?!

[TheAnimus]

It's not un-heard of to be able to upgrade RAM on these kinds of laptops, my girlfriends chromebook has soldered eMMC but upgradeable RAM.

From Engadget:

Update: We are at a media event in NYC and managed to play with the new members of the Stream lineup, save for the 7-inch tablet, which HP wasn't showing off. What's more, HP let us in on a few extra details. The notebooks, for one, are also sporting 2GB of RAM (with the aforementioned Celeron N2840 CPU), Intel HD Graphics and can last up to 8.5 hours on a charge. Meanwhile, the Stream tablets are packing an Intel Atom Z3735G quad-core processor, 32GB of onboard storage (expandable via microSD), 1GB RAM and Bluetooth 4.0. Overall, the list of specs isn't too shabby, especially when you consider the relatively low price points HP has attached to these devices.

[Pob255]

Wait a second.... Wait a second....



I pay £50 per year for 365 Personal.... Or I could pay $99 and have a tablet and it free. What gives?!

because then your invested and you have to give MS $50 a year after the first year to be able to keep accessing your stuff, Office 365 is basically a subscription service and HP have done some deal with MS, makes sense, the more people they can get using it the more money they can make in the long run.
Same way you'll often get pc's with a year free AV on it.

The thing that interests me is the

The HP Stream 8 comes with an interesting proposition in that it offers free 3G/4G data for the life of the device.

Wonder if that's going to be us only or if a uk version would also have that offer?
Also what they actually mean by "Life of the device"

[TheAnimus]

I agree that you can end up bought into say 365, but at the same time, it isn't as if your files will be deleted when you stop subscription. You can happily flick over to the other office suites, and then flick back because nothing comes close to excel.

As for the data, remember it's capped at 200 meg a month, which isn't really very much at all, hell I wouldn't even use a HTML delivered email client on something that restricted. Hopefully it will come over here too, I mean amazon managed it with the Kindle 3g.

[shaithis]

The thing that interests me is the Wonder if that's going to be us only or if a uk version would also have that offer?
Also what they actually mean by "Life of the device"

It's probably like the Amazon devices which can only connect to certain services....so guessing you'll only be able to access the windows store on them.

[Spud1]

The tablets in particular sound really interesting - very similar specs to my Dell V8Pro which is an amazing little tablet. Can run Steam and a huge range of games very well (Civ 5 is great to keep me occupied on the plane for example, and I use it for Portal 2 on my lunch breaks ).

Even if they come over here with a US=GBP price point they will be a bargain, the 8" in particular. Not too keen on the laplets as I think there are better ones for the money if you need that kind of device.