Category: Chrome OS

Google is upping the ante on Chrome OS.  For the past couple of years, the company has had an open invitation for everyone to try and hack into a Chromebook running Chrome OS.  The payout?  $50,000 US.  Not bad but the company have virtually no takers.  Not satisfied and genuinely wanting attempts to hack the OS made, the company has upped the payout to $100,000 US if you can break into a Chromebook or Chromebox.  They are serious about how secure the platform is and are willing to put their money on it.

It is update time for Chrome OS users.  The Chromium team in Google has just announced the release of build 49.0.2623.95 (Platform version: 7834.60.0) for all devices.  As usual, the update is full of bug and security fixes that we expect each month with a release but there are also several new features that are coming along with this build.  Perhaps the most notable is a new Material Design look for the Media Players on the platform. This certainly will give it a more modern look and feel over the more plain Chrome look of the past.

Yesterday I posted about a security fix that was released for the Chrome browser for Windows, Mac and Linux.  As I suggested in that post, an update to Chrome OS shouldn’t be far behind it and this morning, it is now out.  The update is build 48.0.2564.116 (Platform version: 7647.84.0) and it is available for all devices that run the platform.  As was the case yesterday on the browser, the Chromium team is not releasing full details of everything that was addressed in the update until a majority of devices have the update installed.  Once that happens, usually in a week or two, you can go to the Chromium blog to get the gory details on what was fixed.

The week in review for this week has a lot of Android and some minor Chrome OS news.  The rumor mill continues to churn on the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S7 series while Update Wednesday this week did’t disappoint.  There was also some new releases of Android Marshmallow to some devices and a few price drops on devices.  All-in-all, a busy week!  Here are some of the highlights as covered on ClntonFitch.com

Today over at Amazon, you can pick up a great deal on the Samsung Chromebook 2.  While supplies last, Amazon has the 11.6″ model with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage down to $185.88.  That’s a savings of just over $64 from the regular price of $249.99.  The Samsung line up of Chromebooks have always been well received and highly rated for their performance, fit-and-finish and design.  On Amazon, this one has over 165 reviews with an average rating of 4.5/5 stars by other consumers.

Powering the Chromebook 2 is the Intel Celeron 2.16 GHz processor along with that 2GB of RAM.  It has an 11.6″ HD display that renders 1366 x 768, is only .66″ thin and weighs less than 3 lbs.  It also has 802.11ac Wi-Fi support for fast wireless access while you are at home or on the go.  The chassis is aluminium which makes it a far more durable Chromebook than others in this price range which are often made of plastic throughout.  As far as battery life is concerned, you will get 9 hours of life out of the unit so you can keep going all day.

Whether you are using Chrome the browser or Chrome OS, there is a wealth of helpful information that can be found using chrome:// commands. Much like a http:// address, the chrome:// doesn’t go out to the web but searching your PC, Mac or Chrome OS computer to find information about about Chrome itself, system information, extensions and other useful info. While Chrome settings are reasonably easy to navigate, using the chrome:// commands makes it faster and you can bookmark them for easy access later.

In Chrome or on your Chrome OS device, navigate to chrome://about and you will see a laundry list of commands that you can use.  Some of these are going to be device specific meaning that some will give you information about your Chromebook or PC that is running on it.  Other commands will let you quickly and easily navigate to different settings within Chrome to check or modify.

After the break I am going to outline some of the most useful of these commands but I would encourage you to use the //about page to investigate all of them for yourself.  You can’t break anything by checking each of them so have at it.