PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
Attention seeking Aussie etailer Kogan has released the first Chromium OS based netbook, the Agora 12-inch Ultra Portable.
Offered at a price of £226, the Kogan unit differs from rivals from better-known brands such as Acer and Samsung in that it comes with the open source Chromium rather than Google’s official cloud-focused ChromeOS.
Listing a dispatch date of 29th of July, the Kogan Agora looks to beat ChromeOS ‘Chromebooks’ to market by a matter of days. Specifications wise the Kogan unit has a 12-inch LED backlit screen, 1GB of RAM, 30GB SSD drive, HDMI out, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and weighs just 1.32Kg.
Chromium, however, is not the same as ChromeOS. It remains to be seen if that’s a problem or not. The Kogan unit also uses an Intel Celeron dual-core ULV processor rather than the Atom CPUs favored by official Chromebooks, the result of which is a significantly reduced battery life of around 3.5 hours.
So far early Chromebook reviews have met with a mixed reception. PC Mag described the Samsung Chromebook Series 5 as "paying more for a netbook that runs an unpolished OS than one that has Windows 7".
