Acer made a rugged Chromebook to withstand student life

Keep dropping your laptop? Acer has just the fix: A rugged Chromebook designed to resist drops, spills, and other punishment — possibly making it the ideal laptop for the life of a student.

The new model, the 11.6-inch Chromebook 11 C771, is a relative beast physically, measuring 0.82 of an inch thick and weighing about 3 pounds. By contrast, Apple's MacBook — which has a bigger, 12-inch display — is 0.52 inch thick and weighs just 2 pounds.

But that extra heft bestows durability: The laptop is rated to resist drops up to 4 feet and 132 pounds of downward force. In other words, a teenager (a key demographic for Chromebooks) could stand on top of this thing and not break it. The keyboard is spill-resistant, too. The ruggedness probably addresses a key pain point in Chromebooks: When the device is cheap and issued by a school (as opposed to something you buy yourself), users may not to care for it as much. Read more...