This website has been a resource for ChromeOS related news, tips and tricks for the past several years with several of my articles/tutorials being referenced to by dozens of popular websites over the years. Readers may have noticed the lack of content on my website over the past 18 months and might have assumed I have decided to stop writing about ChromeOS, the truth is actually completely opposite. I have actually been dedicating much of my spare time writing a series of books for ChromeOS users. This book started as one single book but … well … is now over 180 unique books and counting. You can even buy them now on Google Play and Amazon!
ChromeOS
Responding to Jays Tech Vault – These Chromebook Ads Are Horrendously Misleading
I watch a lot of tech YouTubers for education and entertainment and the quality of the content is normally far above other genres of videos. I have been watching a up-and-coming YouTuber for a while, Jays Tech Vault and love his videos of him putting knockoffs from wish.com to the test and his videos are well produced and entertaining. Jay published a new video targeting Chromebooks and while I agree with many of his talking points, I do have some disagreements with several other talking points. Normally I would respond in a YouTube Comment however there is so much I want to say so I figured I would post them here. This is not to bash Jay or his videos and I strongly encourage everyone subscribe and support smaller creates like him.
Announcing the Chromebook Community
This website has seen a lot of growth over the past few years with my ChromeOS related content seeing over a thousand unique visitors a week and trending up. I love covering ChromeOS related news and coming up with new tutorials but one of the consequences of creating all of these tutorials is that I get a lot of emails from readers, often between 5-10 a week asking for help and advice. I have been contacted by people from all walks of life ranging from Chromebook manufacturers all the way down to parents who have questions about the Chromebooks that the kids were issued from school. I welcome these emails and will continue to welcome these emails but in many cases, I feel that there is more value in having these discussions in the open when possible so I am introducing the Chromebook Community!
ChromeOS 86.0.4208.0 Rolling Out to Dev – Crostini USB Support Enhancements
I have not covered many ChromeOS updates for a while but there were some surprises in 86.0.4208.0 that I had to make a post. It looks like the Chromium team quietly enabled support for additional USB device past-through in Crostini.
The Shortcomings of ChromeOS in 2020
It should not come as a shock that I am a huge fan of ChromeOS/ChromiumOS and while I am clearly a fan, I am also very critical of the operating system and want to see it evolve. A bit over 3 years ago, I wrote a article on my website outlining some of the major shortcomings with ChromeOS in 2017 and I am happy to say that ChromeOS has come a very long way. A lot of new and impressive features have come to ChromeOS since my post including proper SD card support for Android, upgrading the dated Android 6.0 and various other improvements that were not on my radar such as Linux application support. ChromeOS is a great operating system that has been a daily driver of mine for a long time but there are still several major shortcomings that I would love to see resolved in future releases of ChromeOS.
Upgrading Crostini to Debian Buster (10)
The Chromium team is hard at work with bringing new features to Chromebooks, recently a change was made to set Debian 10 (Buster) as the default operating system for the Crostini “Penguin” container. Unfortunately this change does not upgrade existing installations of from Debian 9 (Stretch) to Debian 10. You are in luck though as upgrading your existing container is pretty easy, here are the steps.
ChromeOS 78.0.3889.0 Rolling Out To Dev – Settings Page Gets Overhaul
If you are a Chromebook user on the Dev Channel, you may want to start mashing your Check for Updates button as 78.0.3889.0 is rolling out right now. I am in the process of sifting through the changes and will update this page as I find them.
ChromeOS 78.0.3877.0 Rolling out to the Dev Channel – Welcome 78
Attention all ChromeOS users living life on the Dev Channel,the first build of ChromeOS 78 is rolling out to you now. This seems to be a basic version increase to usher in ChromeOS 78 as I am not able to spot any new changes.
Deal Alert : Core i5 128 GB Pixel Slate + Type Cover Prime Day Deal
If you are in the market for a high end Chromebook and an Amazon Prime Customer – They are running a Prime Day Special on the Google Pixel Slate. This is the higher end version complete with an Intel Core i5, 128 GB of Space and 8 GB of RAM. This version of the Pixel Slate is normally $1000 alone however Amazon is selling it for $899.99 for Prime Day. To sweeten the deal, Amazon is also throwing in the official Type Cover for free which would normally add another $200 to the price. Sadly if you need the Pixel Stylus, you will need to obtain that separately
ChromeOS 77.0.3849.0 Fixes Android Application Connectivity Issues and Restores Crostini Backups by Default
If you are on the ChromeOS dev channel, you may have noticed that network connectivity has been hit and miss over the past few weeks and if so, you may want to start mashing your check for updates button now to update to ChromeOS 77.0.3849.0 while reading this post. I am still working my way through the changelog for this build and it is pretty lengthy. Here are the notable changes that I have been able to find so far. This is also the first official beta for ChromeOS 77