With Windows 10 exiting support next year, Microsoft doesn’t have an answer for the owners of the hundreds of millions of PCs that can’t upgrade to Windows 11 thanks to its artificial hardware requirements, beyond pointing its thumb to the nearest landfill. But Google is offering those users, businesses [and individuals, too], an interesting option: It will support Chrome OS Flex on those same PCs for “many years.” Perhaps it’s time to take a look.
“Because hundreds of millions of Windows 10 [PCs] are ineligible for the newest version of Windows, finding a way to keep these PCs secure and sustainable should be a top priority,” ChromeOS Head of Product Naveen Viswanatha writes in a new post to the Chrome Enterprise blog. “With ChromeOS Flex, businesses can install a new, auto-updating operating system on their existing fleet of Windows devices. This modernizes devices, extending their lifespan and keeping them out of landfills, reducing their attack surface, and saving on hardware refresh costs.”
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For those unfamiliar, Chrome OS Flex is a version of Chrome OS designed for existing PCs and Macs (I assume Intel-based Macs). Chrome OS Flex started as a product called CloudReady, but Google bought its maker, Neverware, in 2020 to bring it in-house and make it part of the Chrome OS family of offerings. The first official Google version of the product shipped in mid-2022.
This new push is aimed at businesses, but it’s worth remembering that Chrome OS Flex is free for individuals to use. And as Viswanatha, explains, this system offers some compelling advantages over Windows, and that’s true whether the system is supported or not.
For starters, Chrome OS Flex, like the original Chrome OS, is secure, with built-in data encryption, automatic updates, and sandboxing, doesn’t require antivirus software, and it’s the only modern family of OSes that’s never succumbed to a ransomware attack. The user experience is familiar, with a desktop and Start button- and Taskbar-like interfaces, and though it supports only web apps through the integrated Chrome web browser, there are native UIs for file management, settings, notifications, and more.
All Chrome OS devices boot in several seconds or less, and software updates are much less dramatic, and much less disruptive than is the case on Windows. But the killer app for businesses, I suspect, will be the simple and remote-capable back-end management capabilities that make Chromebooks such a success in cash-strapped educational institutions, and the years of regular software updates and security patches that Google promises.
As of this writing, Google has certified almost 600 PCs for Chrome OS Flex, so anyone can see which of their legacy PCs will have the best experience running this system. There’s more, but you get the idea, and it’s possible that this lightweight, modern, secure, and simpler platform might just be the answer you’re looking for.
On that note, I intend to find out. I took a quick look at Chrome OS Flex way back in 2022, but I will be evaluating it again this week on one of the laptops I have here in Mexico as part of a coming series on Windows alternatives. Stay tuned.
And in the meantime, you can learn more at the Chrome OS Flex website.