Acer Offers New Desktop Chromebox

Acer, which has been rapidly gaining popularity as a portable computing hardware manufacturer, has been placing some heavy bets on Google's cloud-centric Chrome OS platform. The company has a fleet of portable computers based on Chrome OS, and is taking Chrome OS to the desktop form factor with a new system.

Acer’s Chromebox CXI system, announced on Thursday, is seen back-mounted in the photo and runs an Intel Celeron 2957U dual-core 1.4GHz processor. It also has a 16GB solid-state drive, and--like other systems based on Chrome OS--offers a fast boot-up time that Acer claims takes only eight seconds.

 The CXI system aimed at small to medium businesses and budget-conscious users who don’t require a mobile platform. However, Acer also plans to target schools, which have been buying portable computers based on Chrome OS at a healthy clip.

According to the CXI announcement:

"Housed in a compact .6 liter (6.51 x 5.12 x 1.3-inches) chassis that stands upright and is VESA mountable, the Acer Chromebox CXI maximizes space, a key consideration for libraries, cube and classroom environments as well as small and medium businesses for task-based user terminals. Two Acer Chromebox models will be available late next month – the CXI-2GKM with 2GB memory for a manufacturer’s suggested retail prices (MSRP) of $179.99 U.S. and the CXI-4GKM with 4GB memory for a MSRP of $219.99 U.S."

Two Gigabytes of memory is not a whole lot for a desktop computer, but that amount is comparable to what is offered in portable Chromebooks.

The system offers wireless connectivity via 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and Gigabit Ethernet. It has four USB 3.0 ports, and will be available toward the end of next month.