Afraid a Celeron isn't very competitive with an i5, even at the same speed. At least not comparing to similarly clocked computers running here. A dual-core Celeron based PC here is significantly slower than a similarly clocked i5 Mac Mini.

They are both based on same sandybridge architecture, i5-2415M has 3MB L2 versus celeron B840's 2MB. i5 also has 4 threads.

So Clock frequency IS the main differentiator here, 1.9Ghz vs 2.3-2.9Ghz (with turbo), which probably corresponds to 30% to 60% difference in general.

Specs of both processors:

Celeron B840: http://ark.intel.com/products/59801/Intel-Celeron-Processor-...

i5-2415M: http://ark.intel.com/products/53449/Intel-Core-i5-2415M-Proc...

Oh interesting. The desktop I was referring to has a 4 year old Celeron at 1.9Ghz, so possibly its older architecture makes it more different, but not sure.

The Ars article said it's a sandy-bridge celeron, which are actually halfway decent.

It's not the same graphics card either, although they're both bad enough that you probably won't be playing intensive 3D games on them.

The main difference is that the Chromebox is limited to 4GB of RAM, whereas you can put upto 16GB in the Mini.

See the spec links I posted above, Graphics technologies are also similar. Seems like Intel disabled some extras on Celeron's GPU.

>it seems pretty competitive with a Mac mini, actually. . . . same RAM

Actually, the Chromebox has 4 GB of RAM whereas the mini with the $599 list price has only 2 GB. So, technically your statement "same RAM" is incorrect even though upgrading the RAM on the mini to 4 GB will not cost very much.

Ah, thanks - not sure how I missed that.

You can't possibly be serious.

There's a tiny little thing called the operating system which makes significantly more of a difference to the overall experience, performance and value of a computer than a few GHz.

For me first thing to do when I would receive either Chromebox or Mac Mini, I would format the disk and install my Linux distribution of choice.

So, also from my point of view the OS provided in the beginning is not interesting.

1. The Chromebox has 16gb of internal storage. I'm fairly certain it's using the same SSD model the Cr-48s and other Chromebooks used, which is not easily replaceable (difficult to find a fitting card)

2. Chrome laptops and (now) desktops use verified boot, you won't be able to install your own OS unless you literally crack open the case (there are physical implements to prevent firmware flashing) and flash your own BIOS.

I'm fairly sure I've seen guides to put Ubuntu on the various Chromebooks and it just took flipping some kind of dev switch to get access.

Just a note: there are three levels of access in the CR-48: regular (out of the box), dev mode (flip the switch), unprotected (open it up, take out the mobo, tape over a contact to disable bios protection).

The guides that don't require flashing the BIOS are nightmares. Awful, awful hackish nightmares. I say this as someone who did it. It's much easier to open it up, but a piece of tape over some contact, flash the BIOS and install whatever you like.

However, I flat out don't think the disable BIOS protection option is available on retail devices. (I have the cr-48).

If you want a lightweight Linux box, don't buy this, you don't want it, honest.

Shame really, you'd think that if you were producing a device that ran linux anyway, you'd be able to pick up a few extra sales by letting enthusiasts do their own thing with it. Since you're not paying Microsoft anything you've got a bit of wiggle room to be competitive pricewise too. (At the very least you'd think that Google employees might like something to run Goobuntu on).

It's all about trusting the integrity of the machine. With the signed BIOS, and the trust chain of ChromeOS, you can be quite sure that you're booting what you expect you're booting.

I'm serious. If you give a Mac Mini running Chrome and a Chromebox to someone who doesn't care about the numbers, and ask them to use them, how do they compare? If you cared about the OS and that you could install e.g. MS Office, you wouldn't buy a Chromebox in the first place, so you're not even remotely their target audience. And then there are always people who will crack the thing open and write their own OS into it, for whom the bottom price vs specs are the only real deciding factor.

Only for those that need it.

Yeah, nobody needs an OS

He worded his point badly, but no need to be so sarcastic when it's obvious what he means, which is that choice of OS only matters if you need it [for more than to sit in the background behind your web browser].

> I'm curious how this stacks up against e.g. a Mac mini

Easy… one of them is a full computer and one of them is a web browser with 6 USB ports and 16 gig of storage