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.
HP joins Microsoft’s Chromebook and Android assault with $199 laptop and $99 Windows tablet
The battle begins this holiday
The battle begins this holiday


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.























