The elusive Chromebook will soon be easier to find in the wild of your local shopping mall. Google announced today via its blog that the $200 Acer Chromebook with a 16GB solid-state drive will be available at 2,800 Walmart stores starting today. Several models of Chromebooks will also be available at Staples starting this weekend.
While Chromebooks are already available at Best Buy and online at Amazon.com, introducing the lower-priced laptop to more brick-and-mortar stores will likely increase it’s visibility and, for Google’s sake, sales of the alternative operating system. Staples physical and online stores will carry a mix of Acer, HP, and Samsung Chromebooks meant to entice back-to-school shoppers. Business customers will also be able to purchase the Chromebooks through Staples business program in case company-wide Chrome OS deployment is in your future.
It seems like Google was waiting for the flurry of back to school notebook announcements to die down before tipping its Chromebook hand. Staples and Walmart aren’t the only places you’ll start seeing Chromebooks either. The company announced that they’ll also be available in “select” Office Depot, Office Max, Fry’s, and TigerDirect stores in the coming months. They’ll also be available in many brick-and-mortar electronic chains throughout the rest of the world, including Tesco in the UK.
In addition to the $200 Acer Chromebook, we’re guessing that some of the first models you’ll see in stores will be the $250 Samsung Series 3 Chromebook and the recently-released $330 HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook featuring a 14-inch display. We’ll see what happens and if these models are enough to entice buyers looking for an alternative to Windows and Macs.
No word yet on whether the Chromebook Pixel will be sold through any of the announced retailers.