14 DAY TRIAL // The status of the 15.6-inch Chronos laptop equipped with an Intel Ivy Bridge CPU may be undecided, but that doesn't go for the Chronos 17 700Z.
Sure, Samsung didn't provide any availability date, nor a price, but that doesn't change the fact that the product has, in fact, been formally launched.
"Following the success of our award-winning Series 7 Chronos , we are expanding our line-up with the new 17-inch model," said David Song, senior vice president of the IT Solutions Business at Samsung Electronics.
"Powerful features with more immersive viewing packed in Samsung's innovative design and engineering excellence will offer users the ultimate personal computing experience."
The Intel Core i7 Processor 3615QM quad-core CPU lies at the heart of the machine, with its clock speed of 2.3 GHz (3.3 GHz in Turbo Boost) and 6 MB of cache memory.
Meanwhile, the 17.3-inch display is a SuperBright Anti-Reflective Full HD + LED panel with a native resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels (Full HD).
That said, the CPU is backed by the NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M discrete graphics card (Optimus switching between it and the built-in CPU graphics is present).
What's more, 8 GB of DDR3 1,600 MHz RAM is present as well, along with a SATA II HDD whose capacity is 1 TB and which has 8 GB of ExpressCache NAND.
Developed by Diskeeper, ExpressCache builds the 8 GB Flash directly into the motherboard, for storing essential files. It speeds up boot times, web browsing, makes the laptop wake form sleep mode in two seconds, etc.
Other specs include Gigabit Lan, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi, VGA, HDMI, audio outputs, two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0, a Blu-ray drive, 2 x 2W speakers (+5W subwoofer) and a multi-card slot.
Everything is run by Microsoft Windows 7 Home premium and housed in a frame measuring 405.7 x 261.9 x 25.4 mm (15.9 x 10.3 x 0.99 inches). The weight of the whole thing is 2.98 kg (6.56 lbs).