Refreshed Chromebook

The new Samsung Chromebook Series 5 550 looks the same as its predecessor, the from last year. However, the 550 has a few important upgrades. The netbook retains its 12.1-inch 1280 by 800 pixel display and 3.3-pound weight, but doubles its RAM from 2GB to 4GB. The 550 also gets a processor upgrade -- an Intel Celeron dual-core processor, instead of last year's Intel Atom processor.

These hardware upgrades should help the 550 overcome some of the sluggishness we saw in our .

Samsung says the new Chromebook is 2.5 times faster than the previous model, with a boot-time of 7 seconds instead of 10. The Chromebook's may be even more impressive now.

On the downside, the new Series 5 Chromebook has a shorter battery life rating: 6 hours versus the previous generation's 8.5 hours. Pricing is a bit higher too: $449 for the Wi-Fi version (versus $430 last year) or $549 if you want built-in 3G ($499 last year).