In the November 12, 2012 newsletter (available at http://goo.gl/UGzDv), I wrote about the $199 Acer C7 Chromebook laptop computer. This full sized, although lightweight, computer weighs only 3 pounds. It includes 11.7-inch display, a full sized keyboard, a 1.3-megapixel camera, and a battery that lasts about 3.5 hours. It also contains a 320-gigabyte disk drive. It doesn't run Windows or Macintosh or Linux. Instead, it runs Google's Chrome operating system. I own an older Chromebook and love the simplicity of the Chrome operating system. It just works. It also doesn't get viruses.
Andrew Cunningham has looked deep inside the Acer product catalog and has found an upgraded version of the same computer that sells for $100 more. It includes a larger battery, 4 gigabytes of RAM memory instead of 2 gigabytes, and a 500 gigabyte hard drive instead of a 320GB model. You can read his article in Ars Technica at http://goo.gl/ZXo0h.
Cunningham's recommendation is to stick with the cheaper model unless you have a specific requirement for the features of the $299 version.
