Google celebrates the first birthday of Chrome OS with a triad of announcements-- the improved Samsung Series 5 550 Chromebook, the first Mac Mini-style "Chromebox," and general improvements on the OS itself.
Like previous models, the Series 5 550 carries a 12.1" (with 1280x800 resolution) display, x2 USB ports and weighs 1.4kg. It also has a dual-core Intel Atom CPU, 4GB of RAM and 16GB of storage (boosted via SD card slot and Google cloud-based storage).
Connectivity comes through either wifi or 3G, and Samsung says it even improved the trackpad.
Even more interesting is the Chromebox-- a Chrome OS-powered mini desktop PC with a 1.9GHz Atom processor, x6 USB ports, x2 DisplayPort++ connectors (compatible with HDMI, DVI and VGA) and Bluetooth connectivity for wireless keyboards.
The 2 devices do manage to make life on Chrome OS even more tempting-- especially since the OS now has a new desktop-style UI, remote access functions, an improved media player and built-in photo editor and uploader.
Google should be roll out more Chrome OS improvements next month (in time for the Google I/O conference), including Google Drive integration, a native Microsoft Office document viewer and offline document editing and storage.
Is Chrome OS ready to challenge Windows or OS X? Probably not, but it looks like Google is not giving up on its PC dreams just yet...
