PC World - USA (2020-10)

94 PCWorld OCTOBER 2020

HERE’S HOW TURN AN OLD LAPTOP INTO A CHROMEBOOK

Upon completion, your laptop will shut

down. Remove the USB drive, then power the

system back on (and undo any changes to

your BIOS’s automatic boot order, if

applicable). You’ll see a welcome screen

once again, now running from your laptop.

Click on Let’s Go to begin setup.

Option 2: Try out CloudReady from

the flash drive

When the welcome screen appears, click on

Let’s Go to start setup. After passing through

configuration screens for Wi-Fi, data sharing,

and Google account login, you’ll reach the

desktop. Close out of the pop-up window

that shows info on the paid editions and

current release notes to begin using

CloudReady.

You can later install CloudReady locally by

clicking on the time in the bottom right-hand

part of the screen.

Choose Install OS in the

menu that appears.

After completion, your

laptop will shut down.

Remove the USB drive,

then power the system

back on (and undo any

changes to your BIOS’s

automatic boot order, if

applicable). You’ll see

the welcome screen

once again, now

running from your

laptop; begin setup by clicking on Let’s Go.

STEP 5: ENABLE

PROPRIETARY MEDIA

COMPONENTS

In order for CloudReady to function just like

Chrome OS, you’ll need to take one extra

step. Paid video streaming services that rely

on DRM protection (like Netflix and Hulu)

won’t work until you enable a set of

proprietary media plugins. It’s the only thing

that doesn’t work right out of the box.

Access the system settings by typing

chrome://os-settings into a Chromium

browser window. (You can also click on the

time in the bottom right of the screen, and

then on the gear icon.) Choose Media

Plugins, then install Proprietary Media

Components.

You can also choose to install Adobe

Unless you wish to read the release notes, you can close out of this desktop

start screen right away.