Did you ever turn an old laptop in to a Chromebook?

[ChrisERoots]

Simple question really. Just wondering if someone found it was worth the investment of time and energy when new kit wasn't an option?

[FN-GM]

I looked at converting all in one desktops into Chrome devices. I was looking at cloud ready by Neverware.

 

I decided not to in the end. By the time I had purchased the licences and a 60GB SSD it was just as cheap the get a decent size SSD for Windows. (The PC's needed them as the HDD were failing). Also I found that the feature set wasn't consistent with true Chrome devices.

[dhicks]

Simple question really. Just wondering if someone found it was worth the investment of time and energy when new kit wasn't an option?

 

Not a laptop, no. We've put CloudReady on a bunch of older small VESA-mountable PCs for use as kiosk and digital signage devices, which work very well. For lower-end laptops, useable as a portable, device, by the time you've bought a CloudReady license, a ChromeOS management license, possibly an SSD and, probably, a new battery for the laptop you might as well have spent £200 on a brand-new ChromeOS device usable as a tablet. It might be a good option for more powerful laptops, though - ChromeOS devices with faster CPUs and larger amounts of RAM are still rather expensive, so CloudReady on such a device might be a better idea.

[sted]

ive converted 6 or so old tosh netbooks. they still take forever to boot but just dont turn em off. its better than windows on those devices but not much

[simpsonj]

Any particular reason you've put an SSD in for Neverware laptop? We've found that Neverware runs on some pretty old hardware just fine.

 

We are just testing the waters with Chromebooks and G-Suite, so a setup of 30 Neverware licences and 30 Chromebook licences for around £1000 breathed new life into 30 older laptops, and allowed us to test it all at minimum expense. So far, students and staff seem to like them well enough! Battery life will definitely become an issue later down the road though...

 

Just as an aside, if you happen to have Papercut, the new Cloud print is fantastic btw, makes printing from Chromebooks/Neverware very easy

[eejit]

Now that you're a few months down the line, how are you finding them?