The Samsung Chromebox is a tiny desktop computer designed to run Google’s Chrome OS, an operating system designed around a web browser. By the time we noticed yesterday that the product had been available for purchase at TigerDirect, the retailer had removed the product page.
But this isn’t one of those cases where the product was simply listed before it was officially released. It looks like TigerDirect actually sold some units and shipped them to customers. The folks at GearkWEKRZ managed to pick one up for $330, and they’ve got the unboxing video to prove it.
The Chrombox has a 1.9 GHz Intel Celeron B840 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 16GB solid state disk. It has WiFi, Bluetooth and Ethernet as well as 6 USB ports.
From the unboxing, it looks like the Chromebox comes with a power cable (but no power brick) — and that’s about it. You’ll need to add your own keyboard, mouse and display, although the user manual seems to suggest that Samsung might sell some models with a keyboard or mouse.
Oddly the Samsung Chromebox has a DVI video port and two DisplayPort jacks instead of the more common VGA or HDMI, but you can probably pick up an adapter if your monitor or TV doesn’t have a DVI port.
Sure, it’s half the price of a mac-mini but the specs aren’t good enough to justify that price tag. The OS is half-baked, no HDMI, no thunderbolt, Celeron (ugghh!), graphics processor (???), etc. A lot left to be desired. I’ll consider it if it’s like $100.