Google announced on Thursday night that its entry in the netbook market, the web-only laptop Chromebook, is available for pre-order. The company made the announcement via Google Chrome's Twitter account with a tweet that read, "Nothing but the web," along with a link to the pre-sale page.
The pre-orders, which will ship on June 15, are available via Best Buy and Amazon. Prices on the devices, which are being manufactured by Samsung and Acer, range from $379 for a wi-fi only model to $499 for a 3G version.
According to the company's description, the Chromebook is "built and optimized for the web," offering a "faster, simpler and more secure experience without all the headaches of ordinary computers."
The device, which uses the Google Chrome browser as an operating platform, stores users' apps, documents and settings "safely in the cloud" — i.e., through online storage systems such as Google Docs, Picasa, etc. — ensuring that users can resume their activities on another machine should their own device not be available. The product description for the Chromebook promises a boot time of 8 to 10 seconds. The devices are also "designed to get faster over time as updates are released."
