Netbook to Chromebook

     Several years ago, I received and Acer Aspire One netbook as a gift to take with me on a "trip." The netbook itself wasn't awe inspiring as far as performance or specs go, but it was able to complete the tasks that I asked of it without many hiccups or sputters. Granted I wasn't exactly working on NASA launch codes, but I was working with some spreadsheets and lots of PowerPoint. In my downtime, the netbook was my entertainment center. It was a little tricky to complete the latter until I procured an external CD/DVD drive. Once I plugged that bad boy in though, I felt like I had a legitimate work system.

A starry eyed Aspire One

    Natively the netbook ran Windows XP and was smooth sailing for the first year, maybe two. After that, my netbook turned into a netbrick. The system was just jaggedly, sluggishly hopping along and really not a feasible way to attempt to do any meaningful tasks. I killed everything and re-installed it all in hopes to remedy the problems, and it worked, for a few days and then it seemed like I was back to square one. I've several computers I'm able to use so the little netbook that used to be able had found it's way to the back corner of a closet shelf. I didn't pay it much mind at all until I started poking around for something small to take to school and not be devastated if I dropped it or it was stolen. Enter Chromebooks. Chromebooks are a relatively new addition to the notebook market and kinda sorta, somehow, in my eyes, bridge the gap between a tablet and a laptop. There are true designs that were meant for that and a strong contender for my hard earned cash was the Windows RT. However, having pecked around on the keyboard for that device, it quickly became apparent that there was no way I could keep up with a lecture or type anything efficiently with any kind of accuracy. Some people may be able to knock out novels on that keyboard in record time, but for my clumsy fingers, it just isn't gonna happen. So, I turned to the shiny new Chromebooks that are out there. Some of them are beautiful machines and promise great performance. I read reviews on many of the different models, but being one of the worst kind of shoppers, hesitant AND frugal, I couldn't pull the trigger on one. Samsung has a really nice one out there, but it costs more than my full size windows laptop. Then there is an Acer alternative which is more affordable but not as pretty to look at. So why didn't I buy one outright?
 
     A few months ago I had the privilege of attending a workshop at Google Austin. That entire experience is another post in itself, but I digress. While at Google, a group of us were permitted and encouraged to use the Chromebooks they had placed on tables for us. Wow! I get some real hands on with this piece of equipment! After some very frustrating moments and some really confusing ones that even had the guys at Google scratching their heads, I pretty much accepted that a Chromebook was not a feasible option. The machines we were using were a Samsung variant and the keyboards were outstanding. The issue that I ran into was the OS. Chromebooks run the Chrome OS. It's a bare-bones OS that is designed around having an internet connection at the ready, because you run pretty much everything in the browser. There are some tools that you can take advantage of offline, but for the most part, it's internet centric. Crushed by realizing that neither Google the company nor the Chromebook was something I really enjoyed, I drug myself home and didn't think about a shiny new purchase again.

Big shout out to Hexxeh

  Fast forward to now and I'm actually banging this out on my own Chromebook. Well, sort of. You see, I got to thinking, can I load Chrome OS on my old tired netbook and breathe some new life into it? Turns out you can, again, sort of. Chrome OS is not something you can just download, however, the source code is open so some very intelligent, diligent, basically brilliant people out there have used that to develop working OS's that you can download and use, FOR FREE. I poked around on the internet trying to read reviews and processes and the one that seemed to garner the most positive points was Chromium Vanilla by Hexxeh. He'll prolly never read this but in case he does "Hexxeh, thank you." I followed the steps listed here and was running the OS within an hour. There really isn't much to it and the helpful website basically gives you a step by step and links out to the things you may need to download and explains the process as thoroughly as you need. Once I decided the version of Vanilla I downloaded was a suitable match for my netbook, I followed the steps to go ahead and install it on my hard drive as the only OS. That kills windows and removes it from you system. Some people, actually probably most, won't want to go that route and then that involves some pretty in depth system changes. For me though, this netbook was on it's last legs and the death of Windows on it didn't mean much to me. Worst case scenario, I ruin the hard drive and I'm out something that I had already forgotten I owned.

      So far so good on my netbook/chromium Frankenstein. It is a little buggy, it has it's herky jerky moments and for some reason, the flash player worked, and then mysteriously didn't. I don't know. Thankfully there are a lot of people out there with much more patience and know how that have remedies to some of the more common problems that you run into with such an operation. So flash remedied, it seems like everything else is in it's place. The boot is pretty intermitent. Meaning, almost every other power off/on it wont boot into Chromium and just sits with a blank screen. Inconvenient? Yeah, but like I said, in my particular situation, it's still faster than booting into XP and then waiting a good 5-6 minutes for the system to settle in and being able to open anything. Chromium as an OS is pretty good for people who don't need a computer to do much outside of surf the web and work on very very basic documents. I think it get's a lot of knocks from people who are comparing it to the OS's we all may not necessarily love but know. It isn't designed to compete with that.

    In conclusion, I told you a really long story about something that is kind of silly, but if you are like me and happen to have an old barely functioning netbook lying around (my guess is there are quite a few out there) and it's just collecting dust, give it a try. I mean really, if it is a step away from a garbage bin grave, why the hell not?

This is from the trip the netbook and I took. It survived multiple moves inside my ruck, some pretty severe drops and lots and lots of por...err important projects.