Acer unveils first Chromebook with Haswell for $249

Summary: The fight between ARM and Intel just got more interesting as Acer unveils a new Chromebook for $249 with Haswell.

(Image: Acer)

The Chromebook space is rapidly evolving, and Acer's new model is the first to bring Intel's Haswell technology to the Chromebook. The new Acer C720 has an Intel Celeron processor with Haswell technology with a quoted 8.5-hour battery life.

The Haswell Celeron should bring improved performance over the previous generation processor. Samsung's Series 5 550 Chromebook yields good performance with the older Celeron, so the Acer should be even better. Samsung's older Chromebook gets six hours run time per charge, and the Haswell Celeron should easily beat that. Significantly, Acer is introducing the C710 Chromebook for $249.99.

The Samsung Series 5 is over $500 on Amazon at the time of this writing. Acer's price is the same as the Samsung Chromebook which uses an ARM processor.

The Acer C720 has decent specifications for such a cheap laptop:

Processor: Intel Celeron 2955U Display: 11.6-inch, 1366x768, matte, outdoor viewable Memory: 4GB Storage: 16GB Battery life: 8.5 hours

This is packed in a 2.76lb laptop that is only 0.75in thick. Acer has also worked two USB ports in the C720, one 3.0 and another USB 2.0. 

The Acer C720 Chromebook is available for pre-order now from Amazon and Best Buy online shops.

It is noteworthy that Google and HP recently announced the Chromebook 11 with an ARM processor for $279. That Chromebook only has a quoted battery life of 6 hours.

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Amazon unveils new incentives for Appstore developers

Summary: The developer program is also a strategy to pull businesses into the wider Amazon empire -- if they're not subscribers already.

Following up some new Kindle Fires a few weeks ago, Amazon has launched a new developer community and program designed to attract third-party developers over to its Appstore.

Dubbed Appstore Developer Select, the program promises "premium placement" for native and HTML5 mobile apps and games specifically optimized for the Amazon’s Appstore and Fire OS.

Amazon is boasting plenty of more benefits (along with promises about more dollar signs), including 500,000 free mobile ad impressions across the Amazon Mobile Ad Network and picking up the slack for developers by rewarding first-time purchasers of Select paid apps and in-app items with an extra 250 bonus Coins.

There are a few limits on the latter point -- namely the offer is only valid for the first 10,000 purchases made by consumers in the U.S. Appstore. Free apps and free in-app items will be excluded.

The developer program is also a strategy to pull businesses into the wider Amazon empire -- if they're not subscribers already.

For instance, Select developers can earn 25 percent credit back on qualifying purchases of Amazon Web Services products with a maximum of $500 in credit each year. AWS credits will be computed as a percentage of pretax AWS spending from preceding month. Unused credits expire on the last day of the calendar month one year after they are distributed.

David Isbitski from the Amazon Appstore team explained in a blog post on Tuesday that this particular scheme is designed to help growing third-party developer departments and businesses to scale on a secure cloud environment.

Developers can also tap into other Amazon resources (such as being able to directly link to Amazon-sold merchandise from the online retail hub), but they are also required to use certain Amazon APIs for in-app purchasing and mobile ads. Gaming developers also have to integrate Amazon technologies such as GameCircle and WhisperSync.

The developer program is already live now, and the aforementioned benefits are scheduled to be ready in time for the holiday season.

For a closer look at Appstore Developer Select, check out the promo video below:

Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.