Acer C720 Chromebook (was: Re: looking for new netbook)

[Warren Block]

On Wed, 7 Jan 2015, Matthias Apitz wrote:

> The keyboard of the C720, in principle a normal PC105, mine with German
> layout QWERTZ, is a bit tricky: it has
>
> - only F-keys from F1 to F10 and they are labeled with symbols for the
>  ChromeOS applications;
> - no hardware power-off (only by an ACPI key which is situated where F11
>  would be, i.e. right above the Backspace key, you see the risk :-) )
> - no Windows key which could be used as Modifier-key in X11;
> - no PageUP/DOWN keys

Ouch.  But the older Acer netbooks used Fn+up/down, so probably 
something similar can be done.  Alt+up/down, maybe.

When researching this machine a couple of weeks back, I saw somewhere 
that it was based on a similar existing PC-compatible Acer model, V3 or 
V5 maybe, or the ES1 series (can't find the reference again, of course). 
But all of those with 11.6" displays look to have older or less powerful 
processors, typically the Celeron N2840.  The Celeron 2955 in the C720 
is about 50% faster.

The E3-111-P8DW has a faster CPU, but it is a third-generation N3530. 
Standard hard drive and socketed RAM, though.