I was going to post this if somebody else didn't. To add one important detail: the HP Stream you linked doesn't just exist as a proof of concept or whatever, which would be one thing, but it's currently outselling all the Chromebooks (and every other laptop for that matter) on Amazon.

Chromebooks dominated in 2014, but they've been bumped and I'm not sure they'll ever be back at the top. Rather than a sea change, it looks like Google was just ahead of its competitors for a year, and now that year has come and gone.

Actually that was a USA only phenomenon, I never saw Chromebooks live in Europe.

Here in Germany, some chain stores do have a few of them at their little corner being ignored by everyone.

It's also perhaps that Germans are vary before an OS which is an internet machine and comes from a company where main revenue is ad business.

Pretty sure Chromebooks dominated amazon.co.uk for a while too...

> Pretty sure Chromebooks dominated amazon.co.uk for a while too...

Pretty sure it didn't.

I wasn't 100% so I had a quick look. Here's a blog post from 2012 with the Samsung/ARM Chromebook shown as the top seller in laptops in the UK (you have to scroll right down to the bottom).

http://googlesystem.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/chromebooks-best-...

You're right though, it wasn't 2014, it was 2012.

For those interested, here is a review

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8784/hp-stream-11-review-a-new...

tl;dr: "...if you have been wanting a Chromebook running Windows, be sure to check out the HP Stream."

A bit more expensive

http://www.costco.com/ASUS-T100TAR-Transformer-Book-2-in-1-T...

detachable Touchscreen tablet, quad core, 2GB RAM, 32GB Storage

Is it possible to install Linux on the HP Stream ?

Almost certainly so. It's got a real bios, so you should be able to change how it boots.

If it's anything like the other devices in that series it will be 32 bit UEFI, which not many distros have out of the box. You can certainly build 32 bit GRUB. http://askubuntu.com/questions/392719/32-bit-uefi-boot-suppo...

I'm running ubuntu on it :)

I doubt the battery life is any longer than the ARM based competition. "Better" depends on what value you put on which feature. For me, I wouldn't use a Chromebook because Emacs needs Alt and Super keys.

I've also seen this system in my search, but it doesn't meet the criteria:

1) This system is listed at $199, not $149.

2) In the questions at the bottom, users do not recommend this as a Minecraft or gaming system.