Google: Chrome OS netbooks should cost around £300

Although still scheduled to launch towards the end of this year, there hasn’t been much in the way of news about Google’s Chrome OS for netbooks for a while. Google CEO Eric Schmidt did let a few details slip about the cloud-based operating system at a recent conference though, including a re-iteration of the planed low price for the hardware.

Schmidt was speaking at the Atmosphere Cloud Computing Forum and he explained that while hardware manufacturers will be free to set their own price points, he expects Chrome OS-powered netbooks to cost no more than $300 to $400. The point he made was that while many manufacturers are currently compelled to charge for the operating system if they want to use Windows, Chrome OS will be free.

Here’s a video of Schmidt’s interview:

Of course Linux is already free and that hasn’t resulted in netbooks that are dramatically cheaper than those that run Windows, but there’s one important difference. Existing Linux distros used on netbooks need to be suitably customised hardware manufacturers if they’re appeal to people who don’t want to have to worry about how their operating system works. Add in the need to develop drivers and appropriate platform-specific updates, and it’s easy to see how a free operating system needs to be paid for somehow.

Chrome OS, on the other hand, will be maintained and tightly controlled be Google, which should lift a huge weight — and certainly some cost — off manufacturers’ shoulders.

Chrome OS isn’t available yet, but working versions of the parallel open-source Chromium OS is available for free download, though it doesn’t yet offer a full set of features. Versions are available for a number of different platforms, but setting up a bootable USB flash drive or virtual PC is the easiest — and safest — way to give it a try.

[ Atmosphere Cloud Computing Forum]