Tag: Chrome OS

The Google Chrome team has launched an education and troubleshooting set of videos for Chromebooks and Chrome OS on their YouTube channel.  The videos, eight in all, cover a wide range of topics from setting up your Chromebook for the first time to troubleshooting Wi-Fi issues.  Each of the videos range from a couple of minutes to nearly 5 minutes depending on the topic.  While experienced Chromebook and Chrome OS users will find the videos to be basic, for those who are moving from a Windows PC or Mac, they can be a huge time saver when it comes to understanding their new device.

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is on the well equipped and stunningly beautiful Acer Chromebook 14.  Right now this all aluminum chassis Chromebook is available with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage for $269.  That price is good on either the aluminum or the gold aluminum finish and is eligible for Prime shipping for members.

This Acer Chromebook is powered by a Intel Celeron N3160 processor running at 1.6GHz and the display renders at 1920 x 1080 full HD.  As mentioned already, it has 4GB of RAM which is really handy on a Chromebook and has 32GB of storage for those things (like Android apps) that you need to store locally.  It also has a built-in battery that is rated to give 12 hours of life between charges.  Overall it is a great package and one of the higher rated Chromebooks out there right now.

Chrome OS is still in the process of having Android apps rolled out to various Chromebooks and Chromeboxes, but that doesn’t mean further improvements are coming.  According to a post on ChromeUnboxed, it looks like Android Nougat 7.1 support will be coming at some point in 2017.  Currently, Chrome OS devices that can run Android apps are running them based on the Android Marshmallow 6.0 API set.  For most of us, that’s fine.  There is however one big bonus to having things move over to Nougat:  Multi-Window support.

Right now if you run an Android app on your Chromebook, only one app at a time can be displayed, just like it was on your Android phone running Marshmallow.  With Nougat, the ability to show multiple apps and resize those windows comes into play and that could be a real game changer.  Along with this comes true multi-tasking too.

A small security update has been released by the Chrome OS team for all devices running the platform.  The update is 55.0.2883.105 (Platform version: 8872.76.0) for those keeping score at home.  There are not many details in the release notes about the update other than the customary bug and security fixes that come with all updates to the platform.  Still, if you are running a Chromebook or Chromebox, get the update so you have the latest and greatest (and safest) version.

All devices will have the update pushed to them over the course of the next few days but if you want to force the issue now, you can do so by going to chrome://help on your Chromebook and tapping the Check for update button.  This will download the update and after a reboot you will be running the new build.

The Chrome OS team has pushed out a small but important update out for the platform.  Build 54.0.2840.101 (Platform version: 8743.85.0) is available for all devices running the OS and should be hitting your Chromebook or other device over the course of the next few days.  You can, of course, always force the issue by typing in chrome://help in the browser bar and it will automatically go and look for the update for you.

As is very often the case, the Chromium team did not disclose exactly what was addressed or fixed in this update to the platform.  They usually limit the amount of information released to assure that hackers don’t know about it and exploit it until a large swath of devices are updated.  In this case, no information was released.  That either means this was truly a minor update and there was nothing worth mentioning or there was a major flaw and they will be mum about it until updates are complete.  Given that there is no indication further notes will be released later, I tend to think it is the former.

The Chromium team has released a minor update to Chrome OS for the majority of devices today.  The update takes the build version up to 54.0.2840.93 (Platform version: 8743.83.0) for those keeping score at home.  If you remember, the first major build of the 54 train was released a couple of weeks ago.  This update is much smaller and generally addresses some security fixes which Google did not disclose the full details of in the release.

The update however is not for all devices.  If you have a HP Chromebook 13 G1, Acer Chromebook 14 for Work and Thinkpad 13 Chromebook then the update will not be coming to your devices – not yet at least.  If you remember, these are the same models that didn’t get the original 54 train so it stands to reason on why this minor update didn’t touch these devices as well.