Digitimes, the Taiwanese IT news outlet, has an interesting Chromebook teaser up today. According to ‘sources’ there’s a bit of a fight breaking out among the big OEMs. Acer, HP and Samsung are to “launch new products to defend their market shares” while Dell, ASUS and Lenovo are looking to increase share. ASUS, it’s said, is to launch ‘many’ different models in Q4 2014.

Every Windows 8 tablet I’ve tried recently supports Miracast but I rarely use it because it’s never plugged into my TV. I’ve thought about getting a cheap stick I can leave in the living room TV but never really got round to it. Now that the $39 Amazon Fire TV stick has been announced though I think the solution will be a no-brainer.

Your privacy is important. While you might be happy with people watching you doing ‘acceptable’ things, what if you change in the future? What if the definition of ‘acceptable’ changes and you don’t agree? What if you live in a country where freedom of speech is restricted? Chromebooks can’t hide you on the internet but they can perform as a clean client from which you can work and walk away knowing that there’s no locally-stored record of your activity.

The Lenovo N20p has been in use since it arrived nearly 2 months ago and looks likely to stay that way. Why? Because it’s the perfect round-the-house mini laptop, has great battery life and is, importantly, more fun and stable than other budget devices. If you like the idea of a touch-enabled convertible read on because this is a full review of the Lenovo N20p convertible Chromebook. Update: 2020 – still in use. Update 2022 – No longer in use. (Out of support – security risk.)

Local storage on Chromebooks is minimal and in some cases it’s too little. You can stream videos and music from the cloud but that’s not practical when you’re on the go so you’ll need a lot more local storage if you want to listen to a good music collection or have a wide choice of videos on planes, trains and automobiles. Some Chromebooks can be upgraded and the C720 is a great example as we found when we  we dropped a large SSD into that  but what if you don’t want to open […]

The 11-inch  Samsung Chromebook 2 update is official in the USA. Samsung have a product page (videos too) and  reviews from some big tech websites are already out there.  This upgrade from Samsung’s Exynos ARM-architecture CPU uses the Intel Celeron N2840, brings AC WiFI and gives you a free software pack. It costs $250 and looks like it could be very popular in Q4. It’s still fanless, still has the 30Wh battery inside and the design remains the same.

The Acer Chromebook 2 CB5 with 1920×1080 screen qualifies, today, as the cheapest full HD screen laptop ever. For a crazy $249 in the USA (and this is very much a USA exclusive) you’ll get this lightweight Chromebook with 16GB storage and 2GB RAM. The Acer CB5 Chromebook is now number 4 in our Chromebook charts, and rising fast. [Acer Chromebook 13 CB5 Specifications and info here.]

The Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro launched last week and has been handled by enough people now for us to get an idea of the performance of the Core M platform and the quality of the product. It’s the worlds-thinnest 2-in-1 and weighs just 1.19 KG which, for a 13.3-inch convertible is quite impressive. Lenovo have squeezed in a reasonably sized battery and there are a few other highlight features too.