Category: Chrome OS

Today on the Chromium blog, Google has announced that it will be decommissioning the Chrome Notification Center in an upcoming release of the browser.  If you aren’t sure what the Chrome Notification Center is exactly, don’t feel bad.  According to the post, it was used by very few people which is exactly why it is going away.  Essentially it was a notification tool that sat in the System Tray of your Windows PC, Mac or Linux device that gave you notifications like weather updates, sports scores, etc.  It was tied very closely to the information that you have identified in Google Now for content to show you.  The Chrome Notification Center was launched back in 2013 but usage of it has simply not been there for Chrome to continue to support it.

While we often think of the Chromecast as a media and streaming tool, it actually has a lot of versatility when it comes to your computing needs. The most common use of course is to show a presentation from Slides via a Chromecast on your Android phone or tablet. However you can easily show the content of your Chrome browser or your Chromebook to a Chromecast device with one simple extension in Chrome.

In this How To I’ll show you what you need to get all of this setup which is pretty simple. Once you have it setup you can easily show your Chromebook’s browser or desktop and if you are on a PC, you can show a tab in your Chrome browser.

Toshiba has pulled back the covers on their latest Chromebook, the Chromebook 2, which will be available next month and starting at only $329.99.  The 13.3″ displayed device which weighs in at only 2.9 pounds and has a full HD display running at 1920 x 1080.  To come with that display are front facing Skullcandy tuned speakers for a superior audio experience.

The Chromebook 2 will come in two variants according to the Toshiba press release.  For $329.99 you will have the Intel Celeron powered device while for $100 more you can have the 5th Generation i3 processor powering your Chromebook.

While Chrome OS is rock solid as a platform, like any Operating System, there are times where things go wrong.  The technical term is “poop”.  Sometimes it just poops and you are stuck looking at a screen that tells you there is a problem with it.  Fortunately Google has made it very easy to recover your Chromebook and Chrome OS through a Recovery drive.  You can create these drives ahead of time which is a good idea so you have one with you in your back while you are traveling.

Creating a Recovery drive for your Chromebook is pretty easy but you have to make sure you follow the steps to assure you get the right build for your particular Chromebook.  In this How To I’ll show you how to create a Recovery drive so you have it ready in case the worst happens.

In addition to the six new smartphones that Acer announced today at IFA 2015 in Berlin, the company also announced a brand new 11″ Chromebook, the R11.  The Chromebook R11 is the first fully convertible Chromebook from Acer and sports an 11″ 1366 x 768 LCD display and is powered by an Intel Celeron processor.  The R11 will be able to have up to 4GB of RAM and 32GB of on-board storage depending on the configuration you purchase.  As for price, the Chromebook R11 will start at $299.

Chrome OS users will be seeing an updated version hit their Chromebooks and other devices over the next few days. Build 44.0.2403.156 (Platform version: 7077.134.0) for those keeping score at home, was released yesterday and it is primarily a bug fix and stability improvement build.  As with all Chrome OS updates, the release will be pushed down to devices automatically.