Ray Saitz: You’ll be able to flip an outdated laptop right into a Chromebook

It’s all the time miserable to eliminate an outdated laptop that also works. The outdated gadget could have slowed to a crawl, it’s an historic Home windows 7 or 8.1 mannequin, or the working system could have crashed. Regardless of the rationale, you could assume it a disgrace to recycle the outdated clunker when it’s nonetheless able to functioning and might be an ideal second laptop or one for a younger pupil. Fortunately there are alternatives to make it, as soon as once more, a helpful gadget.

The answer that would breathe new life into an outdated Home windows or Mac laptop or laptop computer is to put in a unique working system (OS), which is what makes the entire gadget perform. There are different working techniques which is able to run fairly effectively on an outdated laptop and, higher but, they’re free.

Chrome by Google is the working system powering low-priced Chromebooks which turned well-liked to be used in faculties through the pandemic-induced shift to on-line studying. A Chromebook’s attraction is that it requires a minimal quantity of arduous drive house and can work with older, slower processors. Google is providing a model of Chrome referred to as Chrome OS Flex House as a free obtain for set up on a Home windows or Mac laptop which is able to basically flip it right into a Chromebook.

There are some considerations nevertheless. The set up will wipe the arduous drive of all information and applications so you have to again up your whole paperwork, images, music, and so forth, though you’ll have to do that anyway if you’re getting a brand new laptop.

Since Chrome Flex is a part of Google the apparent place to again up every part in your laptop is to Google Drive within the cloud (https://www.google.com/intl/en_ca/drive). You get 15 gigs of free storage and further house is on the market for a nominal price.

An enormous concern is that Chromebook received’t run Home windows applications and is designed to make use of on-line purposes. Nevertheless, you’ll be capable of entry your information saved at Google Drive and work on them with Google on-line apps referred to as Docs, Images, Sheets and Slides that are absolutely appropriate with Microsoft Workplace purposes.

Alternately, if you’re a subscriber to Microsoft 365 you’ll get a big one terabyte of free storage at Microsoft’s cloud storage referred to as OneDrive and together with your subscription you should utilize Microsoft Workplace 365 on-line (https://tinyurl.com/ycztbbtc) which incorporates Phrase, PowerPoint, and Excel. There may be additionally a free on-line possibility, however with solely 5 gigs of OneDrive storage.

After backing up your essential information, you may start the change to Chrome OS Flex.

You’ll want a USB flash drive with a minimum of 16 gigs of house and be utilizing the Google Chrome browser on the pc. If the pc you wish to set up OS Flex on will not be bootable then you should utilize one other laptop to obtain OS Flex to the flash drive and use it to put in the OS on the malfunctioning Home windows or Mac laptop.

With the flash drive inserted within the laptop, go to the Google Chrome Net Retailer and obtain and run and the Chromebook Restoration Utility extension (https://tinyurl.com/2bcaw7xh). You’ll be requested to point the mannequin of the pc however choose Chrome OS Flex for a generic installer.

The USB flash drive shall be able to booting the pc and provides you with the choice of putting in Chrome OS Flex or making an attempt it with out making any modifications to the pc. Use the “strive” possibility if you wish to preview OS Flex to see if it would run on the pc and when you prefer it sufficient to modify. Select the set up route solely if you’re ready to wipe the pc’s drive and decide to utilizing Chrome OS Flex completely.

In case you need assistance, there are detailed directions on the Google OS Flex assist website (https://tinyurl.com/2p9fudjx) and a fair higher illustrated information on the Geekflare web site (https://tinyurl.com/2p9duumh).

Nevertheless, there’s additionally one other free working system which provides you with extra choices than Chrome OS Flex. It’s referred to as Linux and in my subsequent column I’ll let you know get it.

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