My eldest son has been saving up to buy his first PC (largely to play minecraft and create youtube videos). I strongly suspect this will be shooting straight to the top of the list ahead of the Asus T100 that was the previous leading contender.
HP Stream x360: Flippable and stylish Chromebook killer
Like or loathe Chromebooks, the marque offers security and convenience at an affordable price. And for the most part they are lightweight with a touch of style. Up until now Chromebooks had a monopoly on that combination but HP has cooked up some competition with its Stream Cloud range of budget Windows machines. HP Stream …
COMMENTS
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 09:51 GMT msknight
Re: Have to agree with anon
Actually, it does. I'm using mine ... although I have a 14" version of the Stream which isn't listed here, and I put Mint on it.
Despite the Linux video drivers being below the Windows drivers, vanilla Minecraft is playing happily. The processor has enough oomph to .. oh well, here you go - http://msknight.com/technilife/?p=340
But I disconnected the internal mouse and use an external one, as the pad narked me to hell and back.
And here's my personal conclusion - http://msknight.com/technilife/?p=350
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Monday 6th April 2015 12:11 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Cheap and cheerful?
"I like the way paying NSA/GCHQ to store your data is seen as something positive."
That was my first reaction given the name. But, as there's 17G spare plus an SD card slot, restricting oneself to local storage might not be too terrible, depending on the speed with which successive updates bloat Windows to fill the other 17G. An alternative OS could avoid that problem. But with no exchangeable battery I suppose it's intended to be disposable so it might be a race between battery decay and Windows bloat.
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Monday 6th April 2015 13:02 GMT cambsukguy
Re: Cheap and cheerful?
Except that the windows bloat you discuss can easily be removed with a refresh, partial or full.
This thing will upgrade to Win10 I imagine although that will not affect the build up of supposed cruft.
I think using sandboxed apps allows control of the system - my surface remains much as it was, has never been refreshed and seems perfectly fine. I don't use it as a main machine and, as such, it doesn't get loaded with new apps all the time.
This machine would definitely contend if my kid stood on his netbook screen again or the other one needed or wanted the full experience at the loss of the sleekness of a Surface RT. Supporting 360 deg tablet mode definitely helps in that respect.
Given how often I am away from free WiFi and not wishing to have to use a much slower and more expensive unlimited data package, I would not countenance a Chromebook in any case - even with limited offline capability.
Even if a 'proper' PC cost a little more, the benefit of stand-alone everything is worth every one of the very few pennies one might save.
Oh, and for those saying Chromebooks require no maintenance etc. I decided to actually check my kids' Win7 netbook after several months - 0% frag on the HDD, a few recent updates pending, tons of space left on the HDD, all-in-all didn't need touching - I set a disk check an rebooted.
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Monday 6th April 2015 20:08 GMT RegGuy1
Re: Cheap and cheerful?
My first thought every time I get a new laptop is to blow away the virus that is Win 8, 9 10, ... Another benefit is to get rid of the other crap they stick on and make difficult to remove -- you must want security? Backup software, ...
No thanks, fuck off and let me format the thing. Pity I can't get a refund for refusing to use the virus. (Maybe I could, but no doubt it would be so damned difficult.)
I'm sorry, but if I can't get a bash prompt I have no interest in the OS.
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 07:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
> Right about now some of you will be asking, can you run Linux on this thing?
>In a word, yes. I booted Ubuntu 14.04 off a USB stick and everything worked
>perfectly apart from the Wi-Fi radio. Even the touchscreen worked faultlessly.
>I’m guessing a full install and a quick furtle with the Broadcom BCM43142
>Wi-Fi card’s drivers would fix the wireless problem.
Thank you very much for this additional bit in the review. I really wish all system reviews included this information, so this is very welcome. I hope all future El Reg reviews add this too.
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Monday 6th April 2015 10:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Some form
As someone who still uses a ProBook 5310M (with the faster original CPU, SSD upgrade) I have often wondered why HP didn't have a line of slim laptops with just enough power and a bit more battery life. They did a pretty good job back then so with better CPU TDP figures and battery tech the job must be easier. People do like to slate the big names but my old 5310 has done far more years service then I ever expected.
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Monday 6th April 2015 11:32 GMT Alistair
Bah.
Looks nice.
I just want a battery that doesn't weigh 30lbs for my 8570w so I can get more than 3 hours out of it when I'm running all 6 vms.
*cough*
Netbook? wut?
But I do agree -- looks like something I could grab for the little guy (my eldest is now into building his own) to potter about on minecraft and youtube with.
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Monday 6th April 2015 13:09 GMT 404
Re: Bah.
Third El Reg article, fourth reference to Minecraft in comment section (different authors)...
So I'm not the only one dealing with it on a seemingly daily basis from the kids. If only there was decent MC PE server software... Mob AI just isn't there yet and the kiddies are getting on my nerves. I see terrain in blocks now... the tinfoil doesn't help anymore...
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Monday 6th April 2015 12:08 GMT JeffyPoooh
Headphone socket EMI noise?
The HP Stream 7 tablet has electrical interference noise on the headphone audio. I sent the first one back, and bought another; same noise. Some sort of electrical interference. Occasionally goes silent, but then anything happens within the device and it's back. Makes it useless for even semi-serious headphone use.
How is *this* HP Stream?
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Monday 6th April 2015 14:40 GMT keithpeter
Re: Headphone socket EMI noise?
"The HP Stream 7 tablet has electrical interference noise on the headphone audio."
I used to get that on an old Dell (I use recycled kit). I got round it using a cheapo USB sound card. I actually had an old Griffin iMic USB sound adaptor hanging around but you can get smaller ones with just the USB plug and a couple of 3.5mm sockets for a tenner.
Pint: have one for reporting on booting Linux on these cheapo laptops. Nice to see.
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Monday 6th April 2015 16:58 GMT Fibbles
Re: Headphone socket EMI noise?
Usually in cheap desktops interference on the headphone socket is a result of hooking it up to the header on the motherboard with a (relatively long) unshielded wire. Front sockets are especially bad because the wire usually has to run past the hard drives. Using the back socket which is directly soldered to the motherboard usually lets you bypass the problem. Or, if you're feeling especially adventurous you could also try making your own grounded shielding for the front socket wire.
It's not such an easy fix on a laptop or tablet.
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Monday 6th April 2015 17:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Honest Question ...
"Does Windows 8.1 really take 15GB of SSD space?"
Clean install on upgraded laptop last week, the answer is yes before you start to install anything useful (I don't count the apps). Currently with a few programs, user data and the rest it's taking up 35Gbytes, and no, I don't know why either.
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 08:36 GMT Vimes
Re: Honest Question ... @jason 7
...unless you want to install anything that takes up any amount of space. Take World of Warcraft for example. At lower settings that was actually playable on my old NC10 netbook that I bought a number of years ago, so I would hope it would run here too. I doubt however that the space left over once the 17GB has been subtracted would be enough.
Most things refuse to install to removable media, meaning it's either installed on the space left on the flash storage or not at all (as I found out recently with my Surface Pro when I tried installing the community edition of Visual Studio).
There is some tricks that can be played with a DOS command prompt that fool the PC into thinking that a folder on the SD card is actually on the internal storage (a bit like symbolic links for windows I guess) but I would have thought most users would not be aware of how to do this.
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 09:24 GMT Vimes
Re: Honest Question ... @jason 7
Not blaming anybody - just pointing out that saying that storage isn't an issue because of the SD slot might give some people some unrealistic expectations.
I'd know what I'd be buying if I chose to get one and would be aware of this sort of thing. You too probably. But can you say the same of most members of the public?
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 09:17 GMT Thecowking
Re: Honest Question ... @jason 7
World of Warcraft will happily install on any drive you want. You can even shove your install on a USB stick and move it around, just update the location in the launcher.
Not that your point isn't valid, just that your example was of something you can happily run from an external drive.
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 09:27 GMT Vimes
Re: Honest Question ... @jason 7 @thecowking
Odd. I distinctly recall having to look into this when installing WoW on my Asus T100 transformer, and having to resort to using such tactics to get it to install to the microSD card.
Mind you this is over a year ago, so perhaps things have changed since then.
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 11:53 GMT jason 7
Re: Honest Question ...
I also use the built in Disk Cleaner to root out some more, turn down the System restore If you need it) to around 1% and switch off hibernation. That can free up another 3-4GB usually.
Had a laptop brought in to me that had 64GB of System restore points! It was set to 50% for some reason.
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Monday 6th April 2015 16:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Comparison
I'm not quite sure how a £230 machine with 2Gbytes of RAM is a killer of a (soon to be discontinued?) £160 machine with 4G of RAM and a touchscreen. For its primary use - education/training - the N20p is better than the HP machine because of its low cost of management. At £230 the HP is really up against the Toshiba with its 1080p screen.
It's an impressive feat to produce a usable, working Windows 8 machine at the price, but I don't think it's quite the "Chromebook killer" you think. At least there is now serious competition at the bottom end, and that's good.
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Monday 6th April 2015 17:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Where is the rest of the review?
The zero management isn't appreciated by a lot of people because they just don't perceive Windows management as an overhead, just as people happily accepted frequent visits to the garage till cars started to get so reliable that they needed one service a year and very rarely went wrong in between.
I'm guessing that the object of this thing is to run Office 365 and the Windows 8 "apps", tolerably but with annoying performance issues. It's a gateway drug to buying a bigger, faster Windows computer, while Chromebooks are not intended to do any such thing - Google is not trying to shift large volumes of Pixels.
Incidentally, this is being typed on a 2 year old Samsung Chromebook. I might replace it because the newer ones have better battery life and it is my mobile laptop, as distinct from the big thing that edits photos and the like. But that would be the only reason.
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Monday 6th April 2015 18:35 GMT Ye Gads
Re: Where is the rest of the review?
I got my kid a cheap windows laptop/convertible for a couple of reasons:
It's got all the stuff they use at school.
It cost £250
The parental safety software is pretty good. I choose when they can log in, for how long, what sites they can go to and which apps they can use. I also get a report emailed to me each week with a list of where their time is going and which web sites they surf.
It also does the whole tablet thing with the touch screen and allows them to type up essays and homework when it's got the attached keyboard.
Granted, it's not as slick as an iPad but it's replaced the existing iPod and Kindle fire without her ever looking back and at the same time given me some proper parental controls that the other devices sorely lacked.
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Monday 6th April 2015 19:00 GMT Simon 15
Bring back netbooks!
We threw them under the bus but netbooks were great so it's good to see that they're coming back in a slightly different form!
I personally don't need a touchscreen or a fold-back display and would prefer more memory a replaceable battery, bigger hard-drive (~500GB) and 8 hours from a single charge so the Acer E3-116 Netbook from Argos (£220) was the perfect solution for me :) I'd certainly recommend it and it's surprisingly well built for an Acer product. However if you really want the touchscreen then the HP is a great deal as it's got the same processor which does seem to run Windows 8.1, Windows 7 and Ubuntu 14.04 rather well. I think the biggest limitation is probably going to be storage space but I suppose a 32GB SD-Card is cheap enough these days.
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 09:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Too bad, with Linux it might be fun. Seems the American market does not get this machine."
Silly HP, going after the largest share of the market instead of catering to a tiny minority.
I know 2015, year of the Linux desktop (again).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Desktop_and_laptop_computers
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Monday 6th April 2015 23:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: It's nice to see the quote above the 2 key and the hash key next to a large return key.
It is indeed personal taste, but for me, the US keyboard layout can't be beat.
HP will never get a single laptop purchase from me until they stop torturing that poor stunted left-shift key: their laptops seem to have the smallest, most useless, left-shift key of any manufacturer. It's interesting that the Reg has actually used photos of a UK model laptop, most reviews (here and elsewhere) tend to show US models (presumably from a manufacturer's press pack), which hide the keyboard shortcomings.
I don't know which idiot it was who decided to slice the (smaller) left-shift key for the extra key that "international" [sic] keyboards require, but if they had decided to slice the (larger) right-shift key instead, we'd all be left with two slightly-smaller but usable shift keys, rather than one and a useless runt.
Another annoyance of the UK keyboard layout, particularly on modern laptops which all seem to be trying to squeeze keyboard width as much as possible at the sides, is the almost-uselessly-narrow vertical wedge 'enter' key. US keyboards have a nice fat horizontal 'enter' key, extending into what is the third symbol key on the "ASDF" row (with that key moved to be a third symbol key on the "QWERTY" row instead).
I have to give some credit to Acer, who at least slice their left-shift keys with no gap in between, making them rather more useful (yes, a couple of mm does make a difference!), and whose vertical-wedge 'enter' keys are that bit wider, making them easier to hit.
It's just frustrating that the only PC manufacturer who lets you choose your preferred keyboard layout is Apple (who also have the least "techie" way of allowing "special" characters to be entered, so making them more useful overall).
The US keyboard layout also happens to make a lot more sense from a programming perspective: just as ;/: are on the same key, so are '/" (which is why @ is on 2). Yes, # is on 3 instead of £, but you can just set up a compose-key combination for £ instead (OS X uses 'option' for this instead).
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 09:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: It's nice to see the quote above the 2 key and the hash key next to a large return key.
"is the almost-uselessly-narrow vertical wedge 'enter' key. US keyboards have a nice fat horizontal 'enter' key,"
Now are we talking "Enter" key or "Carriage Return". I have both, the CR key is huge, the Enter is a large vertical, next to the Numeric Keypad. On a UK laptop, but I guess trying to cram that lot on a twee laptop isn't going to work.
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 13:07 GMT Zot
Re: It's nice to see the quote above the 2 key and the hash key next to a large return key.
Well, some days I could be using a windows PCs AND an iMac. So I shelved the scrawny Mac keyboard and it's dainty over sensitive mouse, and used a uk wireless keyboard and mouse instead. Using both types when at work would drive me crazy.
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 05:50 GMT Tristan
system disk storage hard limits?
So, how long does windows 8.1 take to suicide in a 32gb soldered on emmc? I put one together yesterday and after office and iTunes but before user data it stood at 13gb free, of a 21gb c drive. User wasn't impressed at the idea that it might not survive much more than two of their planned 5 year working life for it thanks to updates.
Del did a range of power edge servers which unless you changed them had 80gb system virtual disks, and they suicide after about 3 years simply does to logs and windows updates.
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 09:08 GMT Archaon
Re: system disk storage hard limits?
"Del did a range of power edge servers which unless you changed them had 80gb system virtual disks, and they suicide after about 3 years simply does to logs and windows updates."
A lack of basic system maintenance (scripted or manual) on a business-class system over a period as long as 3 years is unacceptable. It does not mean that a system has 'suicided' itself, it means that the user is incompetent.
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 07:31 GMT Hans 1
>The HP x360 scores more aesthetic points for not trying to look like a knock-down MacBook and not being plastered with stickers.
1. Designed for Windows sticker [check]
2. MacBook style keyboard [check]
3. MacBook style trackpad (without fancy gestures, mind) [check]
Editor, please remove above sentence.
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 08:54 GMT VulcanV5
Whatever happened to Asus . .?
Superb detachable keyboard housing a second battery, nice detachable screen for use as a tablet, excellent build quality: the Asus TF101 Transformer. Then its successor, the Prime: engineering sacrificed to marketing hype, beveled edged design so ridiculous it's impossible to plug in a HDMI connecting lead, non-existent wifi connectivity, arrogantly uncorrected keyboard failings including the @ for emailing being anywhere but indicated.
Not sure why I posed the question in the title. . . but when you think what Asus could have done, and how much its mismanagement has cost it, iyiyiyiyiyiiiiiiiii. . . .
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 11:31 GMT SniperPenguin
Good review, and as usual the windows haters are out in force in the comments. ;-)
I miss the days of the Netbook, when the definition was basically "computing for under £150". The trouble is people would buy one expecting a laptop, and as a result people are cramming more features in and pushing the price up.
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Tuesday 7th April 2015 15:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Benchmarks
"Running SunSpider and Peacekeeper in Chrome on the x360 returned scores of 1175 and 579 respectively. That’s slightly worse than the Lenovo managed – 1267 & 535 – but not by enough to make any real world difference."
The lower the number the better in SunSpider since it's a measure of how long the Javascript tests take to run.
I'm sorry to say that 1175ms is really pretty lame for a modern device. My 12 (!) year old laptop scores around 800ms with the latest version of Firefox and my ASUS MeMO Pad 7 tablet which I bought for Xmas manages 650ms. By comparison, a typical up to date office PC polishes off the tests in around 150ms.
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Wednesday 8th April 2015 02:20 GMT blouwagie
The Chromebook value is in the centralized management missing in the HP stream
The real value in Chromebooks, at least in a professional environment is the very very easy low cost tightly controlled cloud base management license that you can get with Chromebooks.
That license is low cost brings the low cost Chromebook management on par with a management solution for which Microsoft demands a Pro or Enterprize license of Windows with Active Directory, GPOs and more.
So as long as the Windows Stream does not have an cloud based easy management, it cannot really be used in a workplace where some level of management and control is needed.
We manage 500 PCs and now added 200 chromebooks. PCs are not coming back.
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Wednesday 15th April 2015 19:07 GMT Kleykenb
chromebook killer?
A chromebook killer that is only useable for browsing the web yet requires frequent backups, patches, anti-virus and anti-malware software?!? Seems to me it's a somewhat crippled Chromebook-wannabe.
Maybe some day this Windows OS will be able to compete with ChromeOS ... but that day is not today.