Acer'a AC700 Chromebook Shipping Now For $350 (Wi-Fi Model)

Last month at Google I/O 2011, a pair of commercial Chromebooks were introduced. The Samsung Series 5, and the Acer AC700. As of yesterday, only one of those had started to ship to customers, and that award went to Samsung. But now, Acer's playing catch-up. The company just announced that their AC700 Chromebook would be shipping to the US by the end of this month, bringing their first taste of Chrome OS stateside.

It's only the first in a planned series of Chrome OS notebooks. It offers Wi-Fi, optional 3G, a 10-second boot time, "always-on" footprint and easily access to Gmail, Google Docs and Calendar, and a host of other Google apps. Acer claims that their machine will last up to six hours with a 6-cell battery, weighing just 2.95 pounds and measuring one inch thick. There's also a full-size keyboard, 1.3MP webcam, support for Flash 10.1 video and an 11.6" HD widescreen LED-backlit display. Heck, there's even an HDMI output that'll shoot images to an HDTV.


Within, you'll get an Atom N570 dual-core CPU, 2GB of DDR3 memory, a 16GB SSD, two USB 2.0 ports, a 4-in-1 card reader, and most importantly, a starting price of $349.99 to go along with a 'now available' label. Those holding out for the 3G model will have to wait until later this summer.