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Last week, little-known retailer SabrePC began listing the ASUS Chromebox for pre-sale, but it seems the company jumped the gun a bit as they took it down shortly afterward. It seems ASUS has given everyone the green light by now, though, as three leading online retailers have decided to list the device for pre-order:
- Amazon — $179 with free shipping, ships March 14th
- Newegg — $179, ships March 14th
- Tiger Direct — $179 with free shipping
Pricing seems quite standard across the board, though Newegg in particular considers their price to be a $20 discount, and there’s no telling if that discount will dissipate in due time.
The $179 ASUS Chromebox will be powered by Intel’s Celeron 2955U processor, which is a 1.4GHz dual-core processor. There will be other models with Core i3 and Core i7 Haswell chips with 2GB or 4GB of RAM, though those will likely run you a pretty penny more (with the latter-most actually being available to business who purchase it as part of a larger package).
Other specs of the Celeron-equipped Chromebox include 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage via SSD, Gigabit ethernet, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, 2x USB 3.0 ports, 1x 3.5mm headphone / microphone port, 2-in-1 SD/MMC port, and more. Of course, you’ll have to seek out your own keyboard and mouse, as well as a display if you don’t already have one.
We’ll have to wait and see if performance on this thing can stand the test of time, but for $179 we imagine many people will take the plunge anyway. Be sure to check it out through the pre-order links above if you’re feeling particularly splurge-y today.
[via Chromespot]
The celeron might be a 1.4ghz dual core but its still a haswell CPU. These aren’t you celerons from yesteryear. These are powerful enough to drive 1080p monitors. Would make a great little HTPC if you could get windows/full linux installed easily enough. Looks like you are stuck running ubuntu if you go the linux route tho and I honestly hate Ubunutu personally. I much prefer PCLinuxOS or if need be Linux Mint.
If you can run ubuntu you can run any linux you want. Install that then copy over the userland from whatever other OS you want. You would just have to stick to ubuntu kernels.
If these have VT you can just run KVM and put your machine in that.
What h4rr4r said and you may want to look into elementary Os. I too am not a big fan of ubuntu but I do like Mint and Elementary.
Sorry to those replying to me I am unable to read your posts at this point in time becuase disqus is not showing them to me. I know there are replies since disqus shows that you are posting it just wont show them to me.
And my reply pops up just fine
“I honestly hate Ubunutu” is something only someone who knows nothing about Linux would say. There are approximately 10,000 Ubuntu-based distros that are nothing at all like Ubuntu.
This is why you shouldn’t parrot everything you read on Reddit.
I have linux running on my current HTPC which is an older HP desktop that is sitting behind a chair. I do honestly hate the main ubuntu distro but I don’t mind Linux Mint which is a ubuntu based distro. But my main Distro is PCLinusOS which is rpm based compared to ubuntu which is debian based. I have been using Linux for years for your infomation. I just hate the way ubuntu is headed/heading personally, and where they have taken their version of linux. So yeah might want to get the facts before you start spitting that parrot crap.
These all have dev mode right?
Woohoo! My future Ubuntu HTPC box!
I was hoping this was going to ship with 4GB RAM, it would have been a perfect Crouton box. I’m not sure 2GB will quite cover it for what I was looking to achieve from it.
I’m assuming this will still need my real PC to print, just like my Chromebook?
Yeah. Unless you have a Google cloud print printer
Not sure why you can’t seem to print from your Chromebook. I’ve been using a Chromebook for the past nine months and it prints just fine to my Brother wifi-enabled printer. Nothing special about the printer.
What do you all think about the price? At first I thought it was good but then I realized that the acer c720 has nearly the same specs but of course it also has a screen, keyboard, and a trackpad. The asus is only $20 less and you have to provide the monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I wonder if it should have been more like $129?