Dell an Official Chrome OS Partner?
Posted on 14. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in Features
Recently, DownloadSquad deftly discovered that the Chromium repository referenced three manufacturers and their private hardware builds – from Acer, HP and Dell. While the first two companies were already on the list of known partners with Google on the project, Dell was left out for some reason.
However, the Dell Linux team has periodically been releasing updated builds of Chromium OS, announcing this fact in the Chromium discussion board. It is hard to speculate at this point, but one must start to wonder if the three hardware manufacturers plan on announcing releases of their Chrome OS products at the same time. Whatever the case may be, we know to expect any release information to come directly from these manufacturers at some point in the fourth quarter of 2010.
The releases that have been put out by Dell have been aimed at their Mini series of netbooks, so it’s easy to wonder whether they will be launching a Chrome OS product that is a 10″ netbook.
It is really hard to say at this point since we have seen such a precipitous decline in the popularity of netbooks since the arrival of Apple’s tablet, so it would most likely do Dell and the other two companies well to find some middle ground on a netbook/laptop hybrid that encompasses an innovative form factor paired with performance specs to wow enthusiasts, all at a competitive price.
Sounds like a tall order. No wonder Google is letting the manufacturers do the talking on this one.
