If you decide that you’re ready to wipe the computer, you can then replace the existing OS with Chrome OS and use the computer as a full-fledged Chromebook.Īnyone can try Chrome OS Flex today, but Google is positioning the product more towards businesses and education institutions - something that the company already focuses on with Chrome OS more broadly. The idea behind Chrome OS Flex is the same: you can visit a website, quickly make a Chrome OS image on a USB drive, and then run that on a PC or Mac. It’s called Chrome OS Flex, and it’s a rebuilt version of CloudReady that was built internally with access to all of Google’s code and resources. CloudReady continued to be available after Google bought Neverware, but today we’re getting our first look at an updated version of the product that’s been in the works for the last year or so.

The idea was that if you had aging hardware that wasn’t running Windows or macOS as well as it used to, you could get more life out of it by using it as a Chromebook.

In late 2020, Google bought the company Neverware, which had made a name for itself thanks to a product called CloudReady that let individual users or large organizations turn old Windows PCs and Macs into Chrome OS devices.

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