-Welcome to the Inside Scoop.
I'm CNET's Kara Tsuboi joined by Senior Editor Seth Rosenblatt.
And Seth, today we are talking about the debut of the much anticipated Google Pixel, the touch book Chrome.
-Yes.
-Tell us a little bit about this device first.
-So this is the device that had the video ad that was leaked two weeks ago.
It's a touch screen Chromebook, the first of its kind.
It's actually kind of interesting because when Google debut the Chromebook several years ago.
The very first thing I
did with it accidentally was opened it and touched the screen.
So this is something that I think a lot of people certainly I have been anticipating for quite a while.
-You've had your hands on the device laptop for a couple of hours now.
-Yes.
-What are your initial impressions or thoughts?
-It's interesting.
The laptop has a different screen ratio than most screen ratios.
Most laptop screens are designed at 69 because that's wide screen and it looks-- and the Hollywood movies look very good on it.
This is actually a 3 to 2 ratio screen because
most of the web is vertical.
At least that's Google's theory.
And so people will be scrolling vertically through their docs, through websites and instead of trying to get websites to change to a horizontal orientation which is gonna be very difficult.
They just decided to make the screen more vertically oriented.
What's interesting about this is that I found that while I was typing on it.
The screen was just a hair further away from my fingers when I went to go and touched the screen.
And then I've been experiencing with Windows 8 devices
which tend to be more horizontally oriented.
-Did you find that the touchscreen was responsive, fast enough?
-It was, most of the time it was very responsive.
A couple of times it was sort of wonky and Google's Sundar Pichai, the senior vice-president of Chrome and Google Apps explained that it was actually not a hardware issue but a back-end issue that will be fixed over time as Google's Chrome OS which powers the device iterates.
It updates every
six weeks.
So instead of waiting with Macs or with Windows for a couple updates a year if you're lucky, this gets updates every six weeks just like your browser.
-And another important point about this pixel is that it also one of the first pieces of hardware-- laptop hardware where the Google has designed itself.
-It is the first.
-The first.
So why is that important as far as where this company wants to go in the future?
-Well up until now, Google has only developed their own hardware for Android.
And this is the first instance of them developing hardware that's not an Android except for Google Glass.
-Right.
-So with this were-- I think we're-- I think what we're seeing is the first steps towards a unified Android and Chrome operating system.
-Interesting.
They can do the hardware and the software and do it all together.
-Yes.
-And finally, how much is it cost and when is it available?
-All right.
It's not cheap.
The wi-fi only version is going to cut us to $1,299 in the US and that's available for pre-order now.
I believe it shipping in a week or two.
-Okay.
-The LTE enabled version is gonna run you a couple of hundred or
more than that.
And that's going to ship in early April but you can also pre-order that now.
-Great.
Thank you so much Senior Editor Seth Rosenblatt.
I'm Kara Tsuboi.
Thanks for watching the Inside Scoop.
