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Google Hangouts has officially dropped support of SMS for non Project Fi or Google Voice users.  The support ended yesterday and was something that had been planned since Google announced the change back in March.

The change is part of the overall strategy of Google to move their G Suite customers to the new Google Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat while leveraging Android Messages for SMS on Android devices.  For consumers, the focus is on Google Allo and Duo to meet these communications needs.

Chrome OS users, there is another new update out for you.  Version 58.0.3029.140 (Platform version: 9334.72.0) is rolling out now to compatible devices and brings just a handful of security updates and performance improvements.  This is the second of these smaller updates in as many weeks.  As is normally the case, what exactly is addressed in this update is not outlined in the release notes.

For those that are new to Chrome OS, the Chromium team within Google tends to keep the nitty-gritty details of what is fixed, especially around security, until a majority of devices are updated.  The logic is that they don’t want those with not-so-good intentions to exploit a security hole by publishing what the issue is until after devices are updated.

One of the announcements this week at Google I/O ’17 was the addition of Smart Reply to Gmail.  This one-tap feature allows you to reply to an email quickly and without having to type anything in response.  It is a feature that has been in Google Inbox for some time now and it appears that users of the Gmail app on Android are starting to see it show up.  If you aren’t familiar with Smart Reply, here is how it works at a high level.

Using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, the email you receive is interrogated for information – Is there a question?  Is there a date or time?  Those kinds of things.  If such an item is found in the email, you will see a selection of replies to that question at the bottom of the page.  Just tap the appropriate response and a new email pane is opened.  Tap send and you are done.  That’s it.

After being announced at CES in January, the much anticipated Samsung Chromebook Pro is finally available for pre-order.  The bigger, more powerful brother of the Chromebook Plus, which is already available, can be ordered on Amazon for $549.99 and it will ship starting May 28th.  The Chromebook Pro is one of just a handful of Chrome OS devices that can run Android apps and with some pretty serious specs for a Chromebook, it will have the horsepower to run the core OS and these apps with no trouble.

In case you don’t remember, the Chromebook Pro is powered by the Intel Core M3 6Y30 processor with integrated Intel graphics.  The processor is clocked at 2.2GHz and is coupled with 4GB of RAM (LPDDR3 for those interested).  It has 32GB of internal storage which is generally more than enough for a Chromebook and has a 12.3″ touchscreen that renders Quad HD resolution.  That display is protected by Gorilla Glass 3 and there is an digitized stylus that comes with it.