Keep Your Old Laptop Alive by Installing ChromeOS Flex

Google offers a free, lightweight operating system that essentially turns any machine into a Chromebook. It's a great way to keep an aging computer in service longer.

When a laptop nears the end of its useful life, you'll notice it in multiple ways: Sluggish performance, random crashes, issues with reading and writing files, and an increasing number of error messages on screen. As your machine grows older, you’ll eventually reach the point when Microsoft and Apple will stop serving you software updates.

At this stage you're likely to be thinking about upgrading your laptop, but there's actually a way to give that old computer a new lease of life with Google's ChromeOS Flex. It's similar to the ChromeOS software that runs on Chromebooks, but it can be installed over Windows or macOS.

Because the software is simple and lightweight—basically a web browser ...