The world at large may still be wondering if Chrome OS is ready for prime time, but that’s not stopping Samsung from taking a second kick at the can. Their Chromebox has made an early appearance on TigerDirect’s website, and it looks to be arriving soon with a $330 price tag.
What does that get you? Not much for an OS, of course. Chrome OS is still little more than a bootable version of Google Chrome, though the introduction of the Aura window manager and an increasing number of offline-friendly Chrome Web Apps are steadily making it feel more and more like a traditional desktop operating system.
Hardware-wise, Samsung is offering up a dual-core Celeron chip clocked at 1.9GHz, which is a big improvement over the 1.66GHz Atom N570 in the Series 5 Chromebook. It’s also packing twice as much RAM (4GB DDR3), a 16GB SSD for local storage, six USB 2.0 ports, and an SD card expansion slot. Wi-Fi connectivity is built in, as is an Ethernet port, and video outputs abound — there are two Display Ports and one DVI connector.
The Samsung Series 5 Chromebook didn’t exactly sell like hotcakes, but Chrome OS is starting to get more attention from schools. The Chromebox might just be a good fit, with a small footprint, low price point, strong security and manageability, and few (if any) moving parts — which should allow schools to get plenty of use out of the hardware. They’re also low-power machines, and that would help drive down energy costs for institutions, too.
And who knows…maybe Google and Samsung are finally planning to out some sort of hardware subscription plan for customers who use Google Apps? It might be even easier to justify a lab full of Chromeboxes if there’s a low, low monthly fee.
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