Acer ZGB Chrome OS Notebook Details Emerge

Google has been working on Chrome for a while now and has sent out notebooks to reviewers in the past to check out the OS. The machines that went out weren't about the hardware at all, the OS was the focus. There are doubts as to whether or not Google will be able to offer a compelling notebook OS that consumers will be interested it. Those same doubts were around when Android first surfaced and eventually the Android OS bloomed and is very popular today. Google undoubtedly hopes the same will happen with Chrome.

Last week we learned that Google OS notebook would be offered by subscription at up to $20 monthly rather than for straight purchase. Whether this will be only for notebooks straight from Google or for all machines running the OS is unknown. A notebook from Acer has surfaced again called the ZGB that runs Chrome. The machine was spied in a bug repot that was filed a few hours ago by Macles. The report offers up a bit of info that allows insight into the hardware the machine might run.

We know the screen resolution is 1366 x 768, which is common. The last line of the report offers insight into the hardware inside the machine that we didn't have before. The line lists a LVDS to HDMI encoder by Chrontel that is used to support HDMI out in Intel Atom-based notebooks. Macles points out that the AMD fusion APU supports HDMI directly so Intel Atom is the only hardware around right now that uses that encoder. It seems we are looking at nothing but another of the same notebooks with Chrome as the only differentiator.

[via Macles]