The Chromebook Test: Living In Google Chrome For A Month (Part 14)

After spending two weeks living in Chrome I've decided to go one step further and install Chromium OS on My Toshiba Laptop.

Chromium OS

Chromium OS is the open source version of Chrome OS. Chromium OS isn't as polished as Chrome OS and isn't guaranteed to run properly on your hardware compared to buying a Chromebook.

Getting & installing Chromium OS

I Googled Installing Chrome OS Onto A Laptop and came across this handy little tutorial that also then gave me links to where to get the software required to install Chromium OS.

I then downloaded the latest build of Chromium OS from the 20th of April 2013 from here and followed the instructions for Windows and downloaded Image Writer for Windows from here and wrote the Chromium OS image to a 4GB Sandisk USB stick.

I then downloaded Plop Boot Manager from here and burnt it to a blank CD if I was unable to boot from USB.

Installing Chromium OS

The first thing that I did was boot my Laptop from USB and try out Chromium OS without installing to make sure that the WiFi Card worked. I then re-booted back to Windows and did a backup of my pictures and downloaded files.

I then booted back into Chromium OS from USB and once logged in I:

pressed Ctrl+Alt+T to bring up the command prompt

Typed install followed by pressing Enter

when asked for a password i entered facepunch

Chromium OS then Installed, I then followed the prompt to re-boot and remove the USB Stick.

Setting up Chromium OS

I then selected my language, Keyboard layout & WiFi Network, entered my WiFi password and was presented with a standard Google Login/Signup prompt. I then logged into my Google Account, set the correct Time zone and waited for all my Chrome apps & bookmarks to sync.

Initial impressions

Chromium OS is a lightweight OS compared to the likes of Windows, Linux & Mac OSX, the 1TB drive in my Laptop has 908.2GB of free space remaining compared to the just over 800GB of free space that I'd got free when I was running Windows or Linux.

Roland

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The Chromebook Test: Living In Google Chrome For A Month (Part 13: Halfway There)

After living in Chrome for two weeks I'm finding it increasingly harder to switch back to using traditional Windows programs.

Since I've lived in Chrome for two weeks I've become more productive as everything I do is within a web browser any way I can't see the point in using traditional programs.

I can see why people are finding it hard to switch to Cloud Computing when for a long time the norm for an Internet Connection  was a slow 56k Dial-up connection that was knocked out when someone accidentally picked up the phone, but with always on Broadband over a phone-line or a cable Broadband Connections more common  it paves the way for lighter power friendly Ultrabooks.

I'm going to slowly upload all my none Program Installers up to my Google Drive and possibly my Microsoft SkyDrive as well creating more space on my 1TB HDD for my Google Drive & Microsoft SkyDrive Offline cache.

Halfway there conclusion

To wrap up my two weeks of living in Chrome. I like the idea of Chromebooks as they suit my needs. All I need to do now is finish off this 1 month experiment, & probably keep living in Chrome until I've got the money together to get a Chromebook.

Roland

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