Chromebook Station

Samsung’s massive booth display included this nifty little station for its two new Chromebooks.

This new Series 5 improves upon the older white and silver models, borrowing the polished metal look of its Series 5 ultrabooks. It’s also much more powerful, upgrading from an Intel Atom processor to Intel’s Celeron dual-core “Sandy Bridge” chip to make it three times as fast. This model also includes an RJ-45 port for network connections.

When a Samsung representative told us that Samsung wanted to keep the aesthetic between the Chromebook and ultrabook consistent, we appreciated that. It also got us thinking: Why would people pay for Chromebooks when they can get full-featured ultrabooks that have far more storage, handle local apps and offer battery life for double the price? Suddenly, it seems as though tablets and ultrabooks are squeezing Chromebooks out of the middle position, or relegating it to hobbyists.

Here are the full specifications of the new Chromebook, or at least as many as Samsung is revealing at this time.

Samsung also envisions Chrome OS as being business-friendly, as evidenced by this Chromebox, a Chrome desktop PC.

Samsung said this device is targeted at business clients, who will be able to hook up the machine to multiple monitors. It’s good for terminals and kiosks, and corporations that want their data on Google’s servers so they don’t have the management hassle to deal with.