Acer is upgrading its C7 Chromebook with a handful of new parts that seem like questionable choices for the cloud-based operating system.
Part of what makes Chromebooks so appealing is that the cloud-based OS means most of the system's heavy lifting is done on the web, rather than with the hardware.
That hasn't stopped Acer from bumping up the C7's specs in this product pump up. The new model - C710-2605 - now has 4GB of RAM instead of the original 2GB, a hard drive increase from 320GB to 500GB, and a larger capacity 5,000mAh battery.
The battery is the big news in the new C7 Chromebook. It has nearly double the estimated run time for the laptop at six hours over the original's three and a half hours of juice.
Acer's head is in the clouds
Like the original C7 Chromebook, the new Acer model still uses an Intel Celeron 847 CPU with an 11.6-inch 1366 x 768 display.
It also still includes 100GB of Google Drive cloud storage instead of relying on a hard drive.
The upgraded RAM and hard drive in the C7 won't see much use with the preloaded Chrome OS, but it could make the new model an attractive option for users who want to load a version of Ubuntu as a second operating system.
The new Acer C7 Chromebook retails for $299.99, $100 more than the original C7. That's quite the price jump in the realm of Chromebooks, which might be hard to justify on the battery alone if you plan on sticking exclusively with Chrome OS installed.
