ChromeOS Flex Update – Part 3

October 3, 2023 David Nguyen

Part 1: https://freetimetech.com/chrome-os-flex-an-interesting-usable-experience-so-far/

Part 2: https://freetimetech.com/chromeos-flex-update-part-2/

I am doing some online schooling.

I have tried to use Chrome OS Flex on my Dell Latitude E7470 with 16GB RAM. It features a Intel Skylake i5-6300U (Dual core with HT at 2.4GHz) really nice 14” IPS FHD that I don’t get tired of and I put in a 1TB WD SN750 NVME for Windows 10 Pro to dual boot. The Chrome OS Flex is running in the WD SN520 256GB NVME in the WWAN slot.

There are a lot of readings in this program. I am doing school in education.

I used the features of Chrome OS to read out the readings for me during the first week of class.

It went well during the first week. I got a laptop bed table for the laptop and connected my bluetooth mouse to lay down to listen and make copy and paste notes from the readings.

But during the second week of class I went back sitting …

The Chrome OS Flex was good and seamless for just productivity.

It hardly crashed. I believe the slow dual core in the Dell was too slow to read out loud natural voices highlighted from PDFs at times.

One problem I had with Chrome, the browser in Chrome OS Flex, is that my bookmarks I made from another computer would not show up until I rebooted the Chrome OS Flex laptop.

It felt limiting in Chrome OS Flex learning and studying for hours at a time.

I went back to my desktop to do a bit of everything. My desktop is a AMD Ryzen 5 3600 with 32GB RAM and a Nvidia 1650 Super with a 4K 32” curved and 1080p 27” curved dual monitor setup.

Now I understand Microsoft’s point on not releasing a ‘Chromed Windowsbook’. You can not be productive for 8 hours straight in Chrome. I don’t think you can just sit in Chrome for more than 2 hours after Chroming for 1 week.

I haven’t turned on the Chrome OS Flex for a week now and I am in my third week.

Having a free alternative like Chrome OS Flex is good.

It increases batterylife and is comes useful out of the box.

Will it become more useful? When is the limit?

Windows can do everything.

Next article will talk about Linux.