Dell announces the Chromebook 11, its first Chrome OS laptop

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By Jacob Kastrenakes on December 11, 2013 09:14 am @jake_k

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There's a new competitor in the Chromebook market: Dell. This morning, Dell unveiled its first Chrome OS notebook, the Chromebook 11. The sub-$300 laptop is being targeted at schools and students, and will be available next month in both the US and UK. While it's sleek and black on the outside, on the inside its specs only seem to line up with the basic numbers we've been seeing lately inside of other Chromebooks. It includes an Intel Celeron 2955U processor, 16GB of internal storage, options for 2 or 4GB of RAM, and an 11.6-inch, 1366 x 768 display.

Dell says that the Chromebook 11 will last for 10 hours on a single battery charge, and that it'll be fairly light at just 2.9 pounds. Those specs seem to give Dell a Chromebook that's on par with recent offerings from Acer and HP (HP, coincidentally, even has a quite similar notebook of its own called the Chromebook 11). But Dell plans to roll out even more Chromebook options over the next several months, which it says will target a broader audience of consumers as well as smaller businesses. Chromebooks have been getting better and better this year, and it sounds like Dell might give next year's Chromebooks a good start too.

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Dell announces the Chromebook 11, its first Chrome OS laptop

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
By Jacob Kastrenakes on December 11, 2013 09:14 am @jake_k

Don't miss stories Follow The Verge

Follow

There's a new competitor in the Chromebook market: Dell. This morning, Dell unveiled its first Chrome OS notebook, the Chromebook 11. The sub-$300 laptop is being targeted at schools and students, and will be available next month in both the US and UK. While it's sleek and black on the outside, on the inside its specs only seem to line up with the basic numbers we've been seeing lately inside of other Chromebooks. It includes an Intel Celeron 2955U processor, 16GB of internal storage, options for 2 or 4GB of RAM, and an 11.6-inch, 1366 x 768 display.

Dell says that the Chromebook 11 will last for 10 hours on a single battery charge, and that it'll be fairly light at just 2.9 pounds. Those specs seem to give Dell a Chromebook that's on par with recent offerings from Acer and HP (HP, coincidentally, even has a quite similar notebook of its own called the Chromebook 11). But Dell plans to roll out even more Chromebook options over the next several months, which it says will target a broader audience of consumers as well as smaller businesses. Chromebooks have been getting better and better this year, and it sounds like Dell might give next year's Chromebooks a good start too.

All

View the original article here

Spotify announces free streaming on Android and iPhone, but only in Shuffle mode

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At an event in New York today, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek announced a free streaming product on Android and iOS smartphones, and also on tablets. "We don't want to make another radio-type service," Ek said. "We want to make something that's really great — that really fits into people's lives," said Ek. Thus, the focus for Spotify Free on mobile is a Shuffle feature that lets you pick an artist or playlist and hear a stream of shuffled tracks. In other words, the service isn't straightforward ad-supported streaming on-demand, but is instead more random, like Spotify's current Radio feature on mobile for free users.

You can pick an artist or playlist to listen to, but you can't pick which songs you're going to hear, or in what order you'll hear them. And there will be ads every few songs, like in Spotify's free service on web, "which is a lot less than commercial radio," Ek says.

"We're giving people the best free music experience in the history of the smartphone," Ek said. "Spotify for mobile is no longer just for people who subscribe to Premium... and the more you play, the more likely you are to play." Spotify's new mobile apps, available now, look much the same, save for a green "Shuffle" button that appears inside artist pages and playlists for free users.

"The more you play, the more likely you are to play."

Before today's event, Spotify had spent much of 2013 making good on the products it announced at a similar media event last December and focusing efforts on international growth and raising money. Those features include Discover, a news feed of recommendations and songs friends like, the Follow button for friends and artists, Connect, cloud-syncing across devices for your song progress, Browse, a catalog of playlists to listen to, Windows and Windows Phone 8 apps, streaming in Ford vehicles, and the continued rollout of its web-based music app.

Spotify appears to be in the lead globally in terms of paid subscribers and revenues, with 24 million users and 6 million paid subscribers, but the company's losses have grown as it invests in the future. Google, on the other hand, debuted its Google Play Music Unlimited service this year, which put pressure on Spotify. Rdio, once considered Spotify's chief rival, has struggled as it searches for a new CEO and expands its marketing campaigns.

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