Samsung, Acer Promise Chromebooks On June 15

Google has announced web-optimised notebooks with an eight second startup time, based on its Chrome operating system, which will be delivered by  Samsung and Acer on June 15, in countries including the UK.

According to the specifications at Google, boot time will be seconds instead of the minutes Microsoft Windows computers usually require, thanks to the lightweight web-based Chrome OS, which includes no BIOS startup process, and delivers the user directly to Web applications such as Gmail or Google Docs. The notebooks will also be secure, continuously connected, and can be shared between users,

Delivery on June 15

The Samsung Series 5 Chromebook, as predicted last week, was  shown at the Google I/O e3vent in San Francisco. It will be available in the US, the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Spain, with prices around £265 ($429) for the Wi-Fi-only model and £306 ($499) for the 3G version.  Acer’s Wi-Fi-only Chromebook will start at £214 ($349) and will be sold in the same markets.

Both Samsung and Acer’s units will be available online in Amazon.com and other stories, from June 15 online in the United States through Amazon.com and Best Buy’s online store. Google announced the Chromebooks on its blog as well as at I/O

“We’ve chosen to focus initially on notebooks because that is where most of the Web usage is today,” Sundar Pichai said during his keynote here, although Chrome was intially proposed for smaller netbooks, and a Chrome tablet version has been proposed.

Pichai, Google’s senior vice president of Chrome product management, promised last December that Google and its partners would deliver Chrome OS notebooks in the second half of 2011. To whet users’ appetities, Google shipped thousands of Chrome OS-based Cr-48 netbooks for users to test.

Pichai delivered on his promise, noting that the devices lack internal storage, meaning all Web applications accessible on the device reside in Google’s cloud of servers.

Pichai said the Chromebooks will last a day of use on a single charge and will enable users to connect from wherever they are via 3G networks. The machines are rendered secure via Google’s special sandboxing security practice.

Google is also making it easy for businesses and schools to adopt the Chromebooks with a subscription model, which could be a key market driver if the consumer segment fails to embrace the new model and machines.

Chromebooks for Business and Education include Samsung and Acer machines, as well as a cloud management console to provision and then manage user access devices, applications and policies. Google is also offering enterprise support, device warranties and replacements and hardware refreshes.

In the US, Google will charge $28 (£17)  per user, per month for the business edition and $20 (£12) per user, per month for the education edition. A three-year subscription is required.

Finally, Pichai said Samsung has also built a Chromebox, a thin desktop that can be used for the business subscription model.