Acer C720 Chromebook Delivers Fast Ubuntu Performance

[Sonadow]

Hmm, it looks like a nice device. However, can it at all be extended?

For example, would it be possible to add more RAM without having to solder anything? Is the hard drive mSATA and can it be replaced? Giving it a bigger SSD and more RAM would make it much much nicer- things these days don't seem to be CPU bound.

RAM is soldered. SSD is NGFF, and these are not available off-the-shelf as of now. They will probably remain OEM-only for the foreseeable future unless something drastic happens to force everyone off mSATA and mPCIe.

So short answer: no.

Regarding installing Linux and BIOS- it seems to be running Coreboot. I assume it can be made to load Debian/Ubuntu/whatever Linux without going through SeaBios? SeaBios is only needed to get the install CDs booted?

It can load any x86 operating system you throw at it. In fact, just 4 days ago I helped a friend to install Windows 8 on it using the instructions posted by Google themselves. Of course it didn't succeed (Windows will need to diet more if it wants to fit in that 16GB SSD) but I was able to boot to the Windows installer.

[brosis]

no windows key! Thanks google!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[coder111]

Is it extensibe at all?

Hmm, it looks like a nice device. However, can it at all be extended?

For example, would it be possible to add more RAM without having to solder anything? Is the hard drive mSATA and can it be replaced? Giving it a bigger SSD and more RAM would make it much much nicer- things these days don't seem to be CPU bound.

And I wish vertical resolution was a tad higher than 1366x768, but then it is a 11" display... And I hate this kind of arrow layout in the keyboard- when left and right keys are bigger than up and down.

Regarding installing Linux and BIOS- it seems to be running Coreboot. I assume it can be made to load Debian/Ubuntu/whatever Linux without going through SeaBios? SeaBios is only needed to get the install CDs booted?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Acer C720 Chromebook Delivers Fast Ubuntu Performance

The Acer C720 was recently released as the latest Google Chromebook selling for just $199 USD. I have been running the Acer C720 Chromebook recently but not with Chrome OS and instead Ubuntu 13.10 Linux. This Chromebook with a Haswell-based dual-core Celeron CPU runs Ubuntu Linux rather nicely. Here are the first thorough benchmarks from this low-cost laptop.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=19463