14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that Samsung's Chromebook has experienced an advanced case of double success, or so it would seem, having been both released early and sold out almost as soon as it got listed.
One might not expect a new netbook to prove very appealing after all the talk about tablets eroding the market share of low-end laptops.
Turns out, however, that if the netbook has a high enough level of novelty to it, it can definitely sell out immediately upon release, like certain other items did.
This is precisely what occurred to the Samsung Chromebook, which went on sale not long ago, even though it wasn't supposed to reach availability for another couple of weeks (until June 15, 2011).
True enough, only a small number of them were actually provided, to select users chosen by the Chrome Team.
What happened was that the team sent out e-mails with a link to Gilt Groupe which, although not known for selling technology that often, did enter an agreement to provide some Chromebooks ahead of schedule.
Registrations can be made here, should others want to grasp at the chance to get a netbook like this of their own, although the stock is depleted now.
The fact that Gilt is an online retailer known for offering instant sales of top designer products at large discounts probably helped fuel customer enthusiasm.
Overall, even though the number of Samsung Chromebooks sold was small, it still served as a good experiment to see how much interest there was in the new OS.
As for the device itself, it runs on the 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N570 processor and boasts a 16 GB SSD, which holds the OS, since most every operation is made in the cloud and, thus, do not need files to be stored on the laptop itself.
There are also 2 GB of DDR3, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, a mini-VGA port, a 4-in-1 memory card reader, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, 3G and integrated graphics, all in a 12.-inch package (display resolution is 1,280 x 800 pixels). Finally, everything is kept operational for up to 8.5 hours.