Augusto recently had an epiphany about turning an older Microsoft Surface he had laying around, that wasn’t quite working (Augusto, you can clarify for listeners), into a Chromebook. And, we thought it would be a fun, techie episode for us to discuss how to do so. Also, we discuss how choosing the right technology upgrade or retirement strategies can help sustain and renew the only known celestial body in this vast universe that supports human life. (We’ll give some ideas at the end of this cast.)

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In this Cast | Turn your Old Laptop into a Chromebook

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Turn your Old Laptop into a Chromebook

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Raw Text Transcript | Turn your Old Laptop into a Chromebook

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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17

And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:26I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:27 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26

Welcome gentlemen and to our listeners today to this episode of productivity cast, where we will be discussing a wonderful world of replacing technology. In essence, Augusto recently had I'll call it an epiphany, about turning an older Microsoft Surface he had laying around that wasn't quite working, and Augusto is going to clarify for you all what actually happened. And then he turned that into a Chrome OS, device, a Chromebook, in essence, and so we thought it would be fun, you know, a little techie episode for us to talk about how he did so. And then after that, we're going to really discuss the broader discussion of how do we spend time and resources regarding upgrading replacing technology, and so on, so forth. So I'm gonna turn it over to you, Augusto, in terms of how did you give new life to your old Microsoft Surface?

Augusto Pinaud 1:21

Well, you know, part of part of what I do is helping small business owners and coaching businesses, sometimes understanding what they need technology wise, you know, years ago, people will go and jump and get a new machine and faster machine. And in many cases, that was justified, that was how software was, but now that software has evolved and a lot of it happened on a browser happened online, really, we have discovered that we don't need necessarily that much more power as we used to. So the problem was the solutions you used to have on the past was get unbuilt line is a Linux machine. And that is fine and dandy. Except that requires you to be a little bit more geeky, even that now the UI on many of those Linux distros are a lot more friendly, still require a certain level of geekiness to go and adjust that and unsolvable the problem. So I happen to have a dead Microsoft Surface. The hard drive is that this says Surface Pro two. And the hard drive was it belonged to a client of mine. And after we discovered what it was, it was dead, and Microsoft don't fix them because it's all glued together in a way that basically they broke more than what they survive. Microsoft basically tells you good luck. So client leave the machine with me as a dead machine. And it was instead of in the trash on one of the shelves, because that's what happened, I was actually looking for a tablet that I could use to record this another podcast. So I did not need to carry the MacBook with me. That's how these ideas start. So the Microsoft Surface had a micro SD slot hidden on the back. So what I went was I stopped in an electronic store and buy a superfast micro SD, put it in the back and use that as the main hard drives. After I did that. Then I went to a website called Cloud ready ready.com. And they have a free distro of a version of Chrome OS, chromium. So I installed that and basically that create a full Chrome OS machine. After I have done that I have used that same thing into a couple of my clients, allowing them to get back to live a lot of all technology that they have laying around. The reality is that is most of your business leaves on the cloud. And you don't use any specific platform software, you can leave in this machine's forever from I have been recruiting now for three or four months to podcast and other things with this Chrome OS machine on a machine that technically is that so it has been a really fun project and a great reminder to myself as well as my clients. What we can do to reuse technology really, if you see this machine, except that you see the Microsoft logo on the front. There is no other thing that will make you think that he said reuse machine or even though the hard drive inside is that

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:50

so for folks who are interested if you have a machine hanging around that is maybe lagging or slow or maybe even In a good news case where it's not operable, you may be able to bring it back to life. And so a gousto, I think you're going to have some links in the show notes for folks to check out the various tutorials and whatnot that you use to be able to make that happen.

Augusto Pinaud 5:14

Yes, and the process is pretty simple. And cloud ready is free, at least for one machine, if you want their support, they have programs for supports that you can get, but mostly, is free for everybody. So it's, it's really, really an awesome, awesome platform.

Art Gelwicks 5:30

How have you found the battery life on the Surface tablet after installing chrome and King, you compare that to what it was before you did?

Augusto Pinaud 5:40

Well, this was not my machine, this was a client. So sadly, I cannot report on the before I can tell this machine is pretty old. I can check what what is the year but I found the battery life really bad. And then I you know, big Sam comparing that with my own machine with my own iPad. And I was really well this is you know, that the life of this of the batteries really, really poorly until I discover or remember that this is a machine from around 2013, where three and four hours of battery, it was the norm, it was cool. Hey, four hours of battery. It's pretty cool. The problem now is we are getting to the point where we have 10 and 12. And four hours of battery seems like last nothing. But it does right now be no machine from 2013, solid four hours of battery on on the on the distribution that I have. So it works really really well.

Francis Wade 6:41

Other question, can it work on an iPad and or iPad?

Augusto Pinaud 6:45

On an old iPad? Not because the iPad will not allow you to install over the iOS? Okay, but he will work on a window on an old windows he will work in an old Mac too.

Art Gelwicks 6:58

Yeah, the iPads are different chipset so it wouldn't support it anyway, there are

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:02

myths out there in the wild about people being able to install Chrome OS on iPads. But it requires a heck of a lot of work to be able to get it get it on there.

Art Gelwicks 7:13

I'll be honest, and this is just brutally honest. Why would you want to? I mean, really, just because you can doesn't mean you should

Augusto Pinaud 7:22

I completely agree with that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:23

I think it's I think it's about being able to breathe life into the form factor of a, an existing laptop or desktop that that would really work well, I think actually, there are probably some Linux distros that would work better on an iPad experience. Because you know, the iPad is a tablet experience, you may be able to actually be would probably be savvy or to use some of the instructions that get Android onto an iPad, because it has all the functions for being able to take advantage of the sensors, and the touchscreen. But I just think it's I think it's just a really brilliant notion to be able to breathe life back into your computer that you may feel is failing or old. And for those who may not know, this, Chrome OS is, in essence, a you know, it's a type of it has a Linux kernel. So you know, in essence, you can actually activate project Cristini within the Chrome OS environment and have a full Linux desktop. So you can you can still have a Linux, you know, experience with Chrome OS, which is really quite brilliant news, go into the advanced settings and turn on the the Linux option. And you'll be able to boot right into the Linux environment, which means you can have all of the desktop software that Linux has available to it, which is pretty amazing. So this really takes us to the larger discussion around when do you upgrade and or when do you replace? And in a gastos case, he was reviving a a tool that was already broken.