Samsung notebooks

IHS iSuppli has dissected and analyzed the Series 5 Chromebook from Samsung Electronics, estimating the cost of components that go into the product at $332.12. The total cost to produce the Chromebook is $334.32 after the $12.20 manufacturing cost. BOM excludes other costs associated with bringing the product to market, such as research and development, packaging, marketing, merchandising, software, licensing, royalties, administrative and transportation costs, cost of sale and what not.

“The Chromebook’s focus on providing a compelling user experience has resulted in the inclusion of some advanced hardware features not typically found in low-cost notebooks”, iSuppli noted. The 12.1-inch computer sports a sealed battery providing eight hours of run time on a single charge. Like the MacBook Air, the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook is designed around 16GB of all-flash storage for instant-on performance and includes 2GB of RAM. A teardown analysis by iFixit revealed a dual-core 1.66GHz Atom N570 processor and Intel’s NM10 graphics chip.

The priciest component?

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We got our review unit  yesterday, but today marks the release of Samsung’s first production Chromebook called the Samsung Series 5. The teardown experts over at iFixit have been quick to dismantle the computer and peek under its hood. Their teardown analysis paints the Series 5 machine as “a well-polished version of the rather imperfect Cr-48 prototype Chromebook”. This means that the Series 5 improves on the Cr-48’s clunky trackpad and mediocre battery life, iFixit explained.

The Series 5 fixes the major shortfalls of the Cr-48 and adds the polish necessary to strike lust into the heart of a broad consumer base: sleek looks, 8+ hours of battery life, and optimized performance.

They gave the notebook a decent 6 out of 10 Repairability Score. What about the innards?

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Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome, has just announced two cool Chrome notebooks up on stage here at Google I/O 2011. He used a new word to describe them – Chromebooks. Add that to your vocabulary, I have a feeling we’re gonna use it a lot moving forward.

Samsung’s 12.1-inch Chromebook, shown above, has eight-hour battery and sports instant-on performance, like Apple’s MacBook Air, with eight-second boot time.

Acer’s machine, seen below, has a 11.6-inch display, 6.5-hour battery and also boots in just eight seconds. So, how much will those beauties cost you?

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