Microsoft’s assault on Chromebooks and cheap Android tablets is getting a significant boost from HP today. HP is launching a 7-inch HP Stream 7 tablet for just $99, and an 8-inch version for $149 in November. Both are powered by Intel chipsets, but the company isn’t revealing any additional specifications for this pair of super low-cost Windows tablets. They’re likely to be very low specification devices, but Microsoft is also throwing in a year-long subscription to Office 365 Personal with 1TB of OneDrive storage and 60 minutes of Skype calls each month. HP’s 8-inch tablet also includes 200MB of free LTE data each month with no contract for the life of the device.
Alongside the tablet options, HP is also launching two new HP Stream laptops. There’s an 11.6-inch model with a HD display, or a 13.3-inch version with optional touch display. HP is using Intel’s Celeron processors in both, so these won’t be high performance machines, but for $199 for the HP Stream 11, and $229 for the HP Stream 13 they’re very low cost for basic computing needs. Both have fanless designs, 32GB of flash storage, and an Office 365 Personal subscription for a year. HP has magenta and blue color options for both, and they appear to be ideal machines to join a number of other devices launching this holiday season as part of Microsoft’s continued plan to kill off Chromebooks. HP is also launching a 14-inch HP Stream laptop later this month.
