Microsoft COO Kevin Turner has recently revealed that HP is likely to soon launch a USD199 Windows laptop during the annual Worldwide Partner Conference of the company presently taking place in Washington, D.C. The laptop is likely to be known by the name of the “Stream,” and would be released in time for the holidays.
This move by Microsoft hints that the company is looking towards taking back the affordable laptop market from the clutches of Google’s Chromebooks.
The official also said that HP is anticipated to release the Stream in the screen sizes of 7 and 8 inches (i.e. tablets) that will run a version of Windows for USD99around the same time.
Turner has been quoted saying that “We are going to participate at the low-end. We’ve got a great value proposition against Chromebooks, we are not ceding the market to anyone.”
Meanwhile, Turner also revealed details about two USD249 laptop options from Acer and Toshiba. The Acer Aspire ES1 will have a screen size of 15.6 inches and would be powered by a 2.16GHz Intel Celeron processor. The laptop also has a 500GB HDD and 4G of RAM.
The Toshiba 11.6 will be available in a screen size of a smaller 11.6 inches weighing just 2.4 pounds. It will have 32GB SSD – which could be relatively small considering the amount of space Windows 8.1 takes.
