How to convert a Windows laptop to a Chromebook

It’s easier than you think, and it’s worth doing for some users.

Chromebooks are wonderful for schools and businesses, provided you primarily use Google services. But a brand new Chromebook doesn’t make an existing machine any better, and new hardware is a quick way to blow throw an IT budget.

Here’s how to convert a Windows laptop to a Chromebook!

• Why do this?
• Download Cloudready
• Install Cloudready
• What to do next
• What’s different from Chrome OS

Why do this?

Yes, I hear you in the comments section and on Twitter. “Why would I want to make my computer LESS useful?!” That’s a fair question, but the answer depends on what “less useful” means to you. If you’re a school or corporate IT administrator starting to transition your enterprise to Chromebooks, being able to convert your existing hardware will save you thousands of dollars on replacement machines. Especially considering the converted Chromebooks will work perfectly with Google’s administrator console.

If you’re a home user, you may just want something more secure for a relative. If your relative only uses their computer for basic email and social media, this is a great way to make their computer more secure. They won’t be susceptible to malware and other attacks that target Windows or macOS, since they won’t be using either of those operating systems. And speaking from experience with some of my coworkers and relatives, Chrome OS is much easier to navigate and use than other versions of Linux.

Finally, you may just be a tinkerer like me. I’m trying this on a 17-inch Windows laptop since there aren’t any 17-inch Chromebooks.

Download CloudReady

You can’t just download Chrome OS and install it on any laptop like you can Windows and Linux. Chrome OS is closed source and only available on proper Chromebooks. But Chromium OS is 90% the same as Chrome OS. More importantly, it’s open source: you can download Chromium OS and build on top of it if you so choose.

One company that has built on top of Chromium is Neverware. Neverware builds CloudReady, a very-slightly tweaked version of Chromium OS that turns any computer with an x86 processor into something that’s nearly identical to a Chromebook. End users don’t need to do anything except create the installation USB, then boot that onto their old computer.

You’ll need a spare USB thumb drive for this. All files will be erased from the thumb drive, so back those up if you need to.

Go to Neverware’s website
Scroll down, then select Download USB Maker.

Once the USB maker has finished downloading, open and run the .exe file.

Insert the USB drive into your computer.
The installer will walk you through the steps of creating the installation USB.

Install CloudReady

With the USB install drive created, it’s time to actually install it on your old laptop.

Make a recovery drive on a second USB stick. Enterprise users will likely have their own installation methods, but home users will want to have a backup in case things go wrong.
Backup any local files to Google Drive.
Turn off your laptop.
Plug the USB drive into your laptop.
Turn your laptop on so that it brings up the boot menu.

• The exact key combination varies from manufacturer to manufacturer; on the Lenovo laptop I am using, I press F9 to open the boot menu when the PC is starting up.

Select your thumb drive from the list of boot devices.
If all goes well, you’ll see the CloudReady logo on screen.
If you don’t see that logo, search for how to boot from a USB drive for your computer model and make sure you have the right BIOS settings.
Leave the USB drive in for now.

From here, setting up the laptop is the same as setting up a new Chromebook.

What to do next

From here, you can choose if CloudReady gets fully installed, and install some proprietary components. Before fully installing CloudReady, plug in any docks or accessories you want to use and make sure they work properly.

Click on your profile picture in the lower right corner.
Click Install CloudReady.
Click Erase hard drive & install CloudReady.
The installation will take about twenty minutes. Plug in the power supply to keep the laptop from going to sleep during installation.
Once the installation is done, the computer will shut down. Remove the USB, power the computer on and start using it.

What’s different from Chrome OS

When you start using the laptop, you’ll notice it looks an awful lot like a standard Chromebook. But there are some subtle differences:

• There’s no Google Play Store or support for Android applications
• CloudReady is about one full Chrome version behind standard Chromebooks
• You’ll need to go into Settings to install some proprietary media components.
• The logo in the lower right corner will be the blue Chromium logo instead of the full-color Chrome logo.

None of these — except maybe the lack of Google Play Store — will really change how you use the machine. It’ll just look slightly different compared to a standard Chromebook. But your Chrome extensions and apps will all just work, websites will load the way they should, and your computer will be more secure than it was before.

What say you?

Would you turn your old computer into a Chromebook? Let us know down below!

Best Amazon Prime Day Deals

Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit

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This kit comes with the essential SmartThings Hub, along with two Multipurpose sensors, a motion sensor and an outlet at its lowest price ever.

Harry Potter 8-film Collection 4K UHD

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Prepare for Fantastic Beasts 2 with over $50 off this Harry Potter set which comprises the original eight films of the series.

Asus FX503VD 15.6-inch powerful gaming laptop

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We’ve never seen this laptop drop this low even during last year’s Black Friday.

LifeStraw Personal Water Filter

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This product can filter 4,000 liters with proper use and maintenance, with the ability to remove 99.999999% of waterborne bacteria.

• Top Deals
• Amazon Devices
• TVs
• Smart Home
• Unlocked Smartphones
• Kitchen
• Audio & Headphones
• Gaming
• Home Improvement / DIY
• Everyday Essentials
• Kids & Toys
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• Fashion

Check out more Amazon Prime Day deals!

Chromebooks

• The best Chromebooks
• Chromebooks in education: Everything you need to know
• Should you buy a Chromebook?
• Chromebook Buyers Guide
• Google Pixelbook review
• Join our Chromebook forums

Amazon’s Nintendo Switch bundle is discounted for one day only

This Nintendo Switch comes with two freebies you don’t want to miss out on.

Today only, Amazon is offering a Nintendo Switch bundle for $299.99 which includes the console along with a 64GB micro SD card and a $20 Nintendo eShop gift card. Considering the console itself is rarely discounted from its regular price of $300, this offer is like getting the $22 memory card and $20 gift card for free with its purchase. This is a Prime Day deal however, and as such, it’s only available for Prime members. If you’re not a member, you can still get this discount by starting a free 30-day trial.

The bonuses you’ll receive here might seem not as cool as getting a game with the console, but they’re actually better. The Switch has a ton of games that you can only purchase digitally which save onto your console directly, and there are other physical games which require the use of a micro SD card.

See at Amazon

Prime members, now’s your chance to save on the 6-quart Instant Pot

Remain calm.

Exclusively for Prime members, Amazon is offering up some sweet savings on the 6-quart Instant Pot multicooker. It’s on sale for just $58.99, which beats the best price ever (a Black Friday 2016 discount) by over $10. If you need a Prime membership, click here for a free 30-day trial.

You can use this as a pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice/porridge cooker, yogurt maker, cake maker, egg cooker, saute/searing, steamer, warmer, and sterilizer. It’s very user-friendly as well. You’ll get a few different accessories, including a steam rack (with handles), recipe booklet, two different spoons, a measuring cup, and a user manual. If you need recipe inspiration, check out The Instant Pot Cookbook.

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Everything that’s new in the OxygenOS Open Beta

Wondering what’s new in the latest Open Beta? You’re in the right place.

There are a lot of reasons to like OnePlus phones, but one aspect that’s remained since the beginning is the excellent software experience they offer. All OnePlus phones now run OxygenOS, and if you want to test out new software features before anyone else, you can sign up for the OxygenOS Open Beta.

OnePlus updates the Open Beta quite frequently, with each new version including bug fixes, security patches, and feature galore.

To make sure you never miss a beat, here’s everything new in the beta right now.

July 16, 2018 — Google Lens comes to the OnePlus 5/5T

Open Beta 14 and 12 have been announced for the OnePlus 5 and 5T, respectively, and while this is a much smaller update compared to the previous one, the two changes that are here are more than welcome.

First off, this Open Beta adds a shortcut to Google Lens right in the main OnePlus Camera app. To access it, open the camera, swipe up from the bottom, and tap the new Google Lens icon.

Along with this, OnePlus also says that it’s “improved photo clarity and optimizations to reduce oil painting effect.”

July 9, 2018 — The final Open Beta for the 3/3T adds minor launcher and camera improvements

A new Open Beta for the OnePlus 3 and 3T is rolling out now, specifically Open Beta 39 and 30, respectively.

With this Open Beta, both phones are getting a few upgrades to the OnePlus Launcher. Search tags in the app drawer have been improved, there’s a “New installs” section in the app drawer, and OnePlus says its improved the app list for the hidden space and toolbox.

The camera app has been optimized for switching between the front/rear camera and there’s a new feature that lets you scrub through AAC audio files.

As OnePlus noted in late June, this is the final Open Beta that the 3/3T are getting. Later this month, OnePlus will issue an update to anyone on the Open Beta that reverts them to a stable build of OxygenOS.

How do you install the Open Beta?

If you’ve got a OnePlus phone, enrolling in the Open Beta is fairly simple.

You’ll need to manually download the latest available version for your device from OnePlus’s website and sideload it, but once you do this, any future versions will be sent to you as over-the-air updates.

Harish wrote up a step-by-step guide walking you through the whole process, and I highly recommend checking it out to ensure nothing goes haywire.

How to install the OxygenOS Open Beta on your OnePlus phone

What phones are supported?

Right now, the list of phones supported by the OxygenOS Open Beta include:

• OnePlus 3
• OnePlus 3T
• OnePlus 5
• OnePlus 5T

The Open Beta isn’t available for the OnePlus 6 quite yet, but that should be changing in the very near future.

Best Amazon Prime Day Deals

Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit

$99.99


$199.99


Save $100

This kit comes with the essential SmartThings Hub, along with two Multipurpose sensors, a motion sensor and an outlet at its lowest price ever.

Harry Potter 8-film Collection 4K UHD

$79.99


$155.74


Save $76

Prepare for Fantastic Beasts 2 with over $50 off this Harry Potter set which comprises the original eight films of the series.

Asus FX503VD 15.6-inch powerful gaming laptop

$729.00


$925.00


Save $196

We’ve never seen this laptop drop this low even during last year’s Black Friday.

LifeStraw Personal Water Filter

$9.99


$16.89


Save $7

This product can filter 4,000 liters with proper use and maintenance, with the ability to remove 99.999999% of waterborne bacteria.

• Top Deals
• Amazon Devices
• TVs
• Smart Home
• Unlocked Smartphones
• Kitchen
• Audio & Headphones
• Gaming
• Home Improvement / DIY
• Everyday Essentials
• Kids & Toys
• Entertainment
• Fashion

Check out more Amazon Prime Day deals!

OnePlus 5T and OnePlus 5

• OnePlus 5T review: Come for the value, not the excitement
• OnePlus 5T specs
• Should you upgrade from the OnePlus 3T?
• OnePlus 5T vs. Galaxy S8: Beast mode
• All of the latest OnePlus 5T news
• Join the discussion in the forums

OnePlus
Amazon

The best Sous Vide starter kit you can buy is for Prime Day

Become one of those people, you won’t regret it.

I can’t tell you how many people have come in to my house, seen this weird tub of gently moving water on my counter, and delicately asked why it looked like I had dinner in a bubble bath. Sous Vide cooking looks weird as hell, because it cooks your food in a water bath instead of in the oven. The science behind how it works is fascinating, but even more impressive is how everything I make inside it tastes. The weird looks from friends are worth it when they taste what you’ve made, and immediately ask how to get this rig for their house.

Thanks to Amazon’s Prime Day sales, the best Sous Vide kit for beginners is on sale for way cheaper than it usually is. If you’ve been curious about trying this trendy cooking technique out, today is the day.

This more advanced version is capable of reaching higher temperatures much faster and maintaining those higher temperatures without any issues.

The Anova Culinary Sous Vide Precision Cooker is a simple gadget you that lets you safely slow cook food for hours, and can be monitored with the included app when you’re not at home. More important than the temperature controls, at least in my opinion, is the massive library of Sous Vide recipes in the app. The Anova team has so much information in there, and it made trying new things super easy.

There are a couple versions of this cooker at different prices, but for Amazon Prime Day, the highest end model dropped in price from $199 to $108.96. That effectively makes it the same price as the starter version, which is a big deal because this more advanced version is capable of reaching higher temperatures much faster and maintaining those higher temperatures without any issues. It also has a WiFi radio in it instead of just Bluetooth, so the remote part of the app will work in more places.

Give it a shot, you won’t be disappointed.

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Save big on SanDisk microSD cards, SSDs, flash drives and more on Prime Day

Get it now!

Amazon is kicking off Prime Day with a huge sale on SanDisk’s popular storage products, including SSDs, flash drives, memory cards, and more. You can grab a 64GB microSD card for $18.69 or 128GB SD card for $54.99. There’s also a 480GB SSD for $99.99 and an assortment of flash drives starting at under $20.

Be sure to check out all the deals now.

See at Amazon

Prime Day has the one travel-anywhere charge-anything portable battery you need for just $34

This is an amazing battery at its full price, and even better on sale for Prime Day.

There’s a seemingly endless number of portable battery packs out there with different combinations of features, ports and capacities to fit every single need. We’ve written about dozens of our favorites here, with everything from phone-specific batteries up to giants that can pull double duty charging your laptop or tablet. With Amazon Prime Day kicking off, though, there are some portable batteries that are specifically worth talking about because they’re on deep discount.

This RAVPower 20100mAh battery pack is worth recognition even at its usual price of about $50, but it’s extra enticing when it’s on sale for just $34. Here’s why you should be buying it.

See at Amazon

Here are all of the best Prime Day 2018 deals

The first requirement for any new phone accessory I buy is that it supports USB-C. I only have a couple Micro-USB cables kicking around at this point, and I don’t want to have an extra one around just to charge a battery. So this RAVPower unit passes the first test, with a USB-C port that can be used for charging itself or supplying power. The USB-C port handles 5V/3A in either direction, which means you can charge the battery back up in a handful of hours or supply wall charger-like speeds to USB-C devices. But here’s the bonus: this also has a Micro-USB port for charging, just in case you’re in a situation in which you need it. Micro-USB is still everywhere, so if you’re in a pinch you’ll never be left without a way to get this battery recharged.

In terms of the other outputs, RAVPower gives you the standard options: you get a USB-A port that offers Quick Charge 3.0 speeds for the vast majority of Android phones that support it, plus another standard USB-A port at 5V/2.4A for everything else. Between the USB-C port and Quick Charge port you’ll charge Androids as quickly as possible, and that extra USB-A port is great for your friend’s iPhone that needs a quick top-up or perhaps your pair of headphones or other battery-powered accessory that doesn’t have Quick Charge. The variety of charging options here cover the whole spectrum of possible situations.

Now, let’s talk capacity. 20100mAh isn’t particularly portable unless you’re carrying a bag, but RAVPower isn’t trying to make it seem like this is a tiny little thing — it’s all about having the capacity on hand to charge up several devices without a thought. You’ll be able to plug in two phones at 1% battery and charge them both up with half of the battery pack left to use later. Or plug in a couple tablets and charge them fully with enough left over for another phone charge later. You aren’t likely to use up all 20100mAh in one go, but with this amount of capacity you don’t have to think about recharging the battery itself all of the time — just use it when you need it, and charge it up here and there.

This isn’t the absolute perfect big battery if you intend to primarily use it with laptops, because that USB-C output caps out at 15W rather than the much higher 30 or 60W of some larger batteries. But then again those larger USB-C PD batteries are twice the price of this one … before it’s on sale for Prime Day. This RAVPower 20100mAh battery is an all-around workhorse of a battery that can charge up your phones and other accessories in whatever way they need, and have enough capacity to do it a couple times over — and then recharge itself with either USB-C or Micro-USB, so you’ll never be stranded. It’s a killer battery at full price, and an unbelievable one when it’s on sale this Prime Day for $34.

See at Amazon

Get a Sonos One and $50 Amazon gift card for just $199

Amazon has the Sonos One smart speaker bundled with a $50 gift card for $199, which is what the speaker normally sells for. You can opt to grab it in either black or white, depending on your preference. The gift card is delivered with the speaker, meaning you won’t be able to use it on Prime Day, but odds are you’ll be able to find something else from Amazon to buy in the near future.

See at Amazon

Discover things you never knew with this $100 23andMe DNA kit

Look at your insides.

Get the 23andMe Ancestry DNA Test for $99.99 this Prime Day. This is a Health and Ancestry kit, which gives you more information than the basic Ancestry kits we’ve seen on sale in the past. It normally sells for $200 and doesn’t go on sale as often as the other versions.

These kits are pretty easy. You just take a saliva test, send it off to the lab and get your results in a few weeks (6-8). This one in particular will give you more than just your Ancestry. It will also give you a rundown of your health in regards to your genetics.

See on Amazon

Amazon home page is back up after early Prime Day outage

What great timing.

Update: After an early stumble, Amazon’s home page seems to be working again around the world. Go forth and shop those great deals!

Well that didn’t exactly kick off how Amazon expected. Just as Prime Day kicked off, Amazon’s home page has gone down for just about everyone. In the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, when you head to Amazon’s home page to see all of the new Prime Day deals you’re going to find some sort of error.

We wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon made amends for the outage quickly.

Whether you’re greeted by one of the standard 404 pages with the great “dogs of Amazon” or are stuck in the more frustrating version where you’re simply put through a loop of broken pages, it’s pretty clear something isn’t right. We sympathize with the folks in charge of keeping the site up right now … we can only imagine the immense amount of traffic Amazon’s servers are experiencing — especially as news of it being down spreads. Amazon hasn’t had any widespread technical issues with previous iterations of Prime Day, but of course these sorts of things always come up at the most inopportune times and they’re very hard to plan for.

I wouldn’t expect this to last too long though, and given Amazon’s customer-friendly approach to the way it does business I wouldn’t count out having some sort of extension of deals in order to make up for it. There are still some amazing Prime Day deals to be had when the site comes back up, and for the time being it seems as though direct links to products, and then the shopping cart, are up and working properly. You’ll just have to follow direct links to the deals rather than browsing from the home page.

Best Amazon Prime Day Deals in 2018