I installed ChromeOS Flex on my old laptop, and you should too!
I have been using Chromebooks for a while now, and I have been a vocal fan. My first Chromebook was purchased just because it was very light and available for about $200. I didn’t really know what to expect. I just wanted to try, and the price was awesome. As I started using it, I noticed that the performance of Chrome browser was a lot better than my expensive laptops, both Mac and Windows. Considering that the Chromebook had a very low end CPU (Pentium), only 4GB in RAM, it was quite a shock.
Then I noticed how long the battery lasts, how quickly it starts up and shuts down, and how light it was to carry around. Eventually, the chromebook became my main laptop. Sure, I still needed my other expensive laptop for editing audio and video. But that’s not my main usage. On a daily basis, most of my laptop usage was just on the Chrome browser, and hardly on any other app. And the Chrome browser on a cheap Chromebook with a very low end CPU and just 4GB RAM was easily beating Chrome (and any other browser) on a Mac and Windows laptop.
Though, I also noticed that as the tabs on the Chromebook browser increased, the tab switching was getting slower. At this point I was so hooked to the light weight, long battery life, fast start up and fast browser of the Chromebook, I decided to buy another one having a better CPU (Intel i5) and it has been the best laptop I have ever bought.
There are many other pros and cons of Chrombooks. You can read about them on your favorite review sites. It may or may not convince you to buy a Chromebook. What I am recommending you is to try the free ChromeOS Flex on an old laptop that you hardly ever use, and are thinking of throwing away.
Yes. That’s what ChromeOS Flex is aimed at. You can install it on your Windows or MacOS laptop. The older laptops probably have a CPU/Memory combination that’s not enough for today’s applications. But … that’s going to be way more than enough for ChromeOS Flex.
You can read more about it on Google’s information page on ChromOS Flex. https://chromeenterprise.google/os/chromeosflex/
Personally, I really really liked the benefit of reducing e-waste, and I liked ChromeOS anyways. So I gave it a try. I followed the steps to install ChromeOS Flex on my older laptop with an Intel i7 and 8GB RAM. Even though my specific laptop model was not in the list of supported devices, everything went smoothly. It’s very important to note that this process is irreversible. You will lose all the data on the laptop on which you install ChromOS Flex.
The resulting performance improvement was very noticeable! The CPU/memory combination is way more than what ChromeOS needs to deliver that speed. The startup/shutdown is superfast and the battery lasts longer. I have not encountered any sites that don’t work with configuration. I have been using this laptop with ChromeOS Flex for about 4 months now, and have been very happy.
ChromeOS Flex is not exactly the same as ChromeOS. For example, the Chromebooks are generally far more secure because of specific hardware enhancements. So your laptop is not going to become a Chromebook. You can read more about the differences Google’s information page on the differences between ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex. https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11542901?hl=en
Based on my experience, I highly recommend that you try it. It’s completely free. I am pretty sure a laptop that you have stopped using will again be used, and possibly for most of your daily browser tasks it will perform better than your newer laptop.
