The Google Chrome operating system has been available for almost a year with lots of updates to the OS, but very little traction in the market. Google made it prominent by giving away thousands of CR-48 laptops, but when the final version was released there were only two hardware makers on board – Samsung and Acer. Sadly that hasn’t changed since the release, and it didn’t change at CES , but there was some Chrome OS news there.
Samsung announced two new additions to the Chrome world – one is a new notebook, but the other is the first Chrome desktop computer, or “Chromebox”. The Series 5 notebook has been updated to include 2 GB of RAM (which it already had – not sure if the RAM type changed), a 16 GB SSD (it previously had a 16 GB Serial ATA), and a slightly faster CPU. Meanwhile, the Chromebox is considered a Series 3 product, and it comes with six USB ports, a DVI port, 2 Display Link ports, an ethernet jack, and is currently running Chrome 17.0.963.15. It’s also rumored to have a dual-core processor under the hood, along with 2 GB of RAM, and 16 GB SSD. The video below gives a good idea of what both new products look like.
Video Source: BetaNews
I can’t believe they’re still bothering making this junk. Nobody is buying this, and why would they? For the same price I can get a real computer that will do everything a Chromebook will do plus…everything computers do.
Unless Google/Samsung has found a way to use a portion of the 16 GB SSD as virtual memory, 2 GB of RAM is no way enough for a surfing experience similar to Chrome used on a PC or Mac. I have a Series 5 Chromebook and I was hoping to see a serious hardware upgrade, besides the processor, on the next version.