- Hey there, Pete Moriarty here.
In this video,
I'm gonna be covering the basics of Chrome OS
for absolute newbies.
If you've not heard of it,
or you don't know what it is,
or you wanna learn more about the absolute basics,
I'm gonna be covering Chrome OS for the absolute newbie
in this video.
(high-energy music)
Now, if right now you are used to a Windows machine
or an Apple machine,
which is what most people are using these days,
you may be curious,
what is a Chromebook
and what is the operating system of Chrome?
What is this Googly world of computers
and what does it actually look like?
Well, Chrome OS is a Linux based operating system,
let that scare you because it's a Google operating system.
What you're actually looking at
when you're using the computer is the Google world,
and so you're gonna use your Google
email address to sign in,
you're gonna use your Google account
to store all of your data,
and it's gonna obviously connect to
all of Google services for you
and make it easy to get your work done in the Google world.
Now, this video and this content is aimed at
organizations who are growing
and who are exiting the growth stage
and going into the scale stage of business,
which means that you're growing
and starting to think about your technology and your team,
you're starting to think about
standardizing the computer equipment
that you might be buying for your staff.
You may be outsourcing and wanting to ship machines
to different parts of the world for your team to use,
but you're concerned about security,
and you wanna make sure that things run
securely and are well protected,
particularly if you're already using G Suite.
Now, using a Chromebook in a school environment
is what most people have had
access to and experience with, with the Chrome devices.
Many people have kids in school
and those kids bring home a Chromebook,
and that's where you kinda get to
be familiar with the Chrome operating system,
but how does it actually work in a business,
and does it actually work for a work computer?
Now, personally,
I've been using Chrome devices for over five years
as my primary machines,
and that's from laptops to desktops to meeting devices,
Chrome is a great operating system,
and I love it because of the simplicity, the security,
and because of course the integration
with all of Google's tools.
I'm gonna be sharing in this video,
some of the ways that I use Chrome OS,
some of the absolute basics of the operating system
and how you can use it in your business,
and why you might consider it for your next computer.
Now, the first question we inevitably get is
what does Chrome OS look like?
And I'm gonna literally show you the login screen.
You boot up your computer and you've got a login,
and this happens to be my Google account.
It's linked to my Google business email address,
and when I go and sign in here,
it's gonna automatically log me into my Google account
and I'm now on the Chrome desktop.
Now you'll see, you've got some kind of familiar motifs,
on the left hand side
we've got what would normally be a start menu,
but this is called the Launcher,
and here it effectively opens up a Google Search bar,
where you can search for apps,
you can open Chrome add-ons or plugins
that you've got set up on the computer,
or of course you can search the web
and browse anything online.
Then you've got pretty much a Chrome browser.
That's basically the main thing that you've got access to.
If I go ahead and open up Google,
it's gonna bring up a Google screen here,
and anything else that I wanna do online
basically happens here right inside the browser.
Now, the primary purpose
that you would buy a Chromebook or a Chrome device
is if you're doing most of your work online.
They're really designed to be portal to the net
for you to use online applications.
So if you're using xero.com for your accounting,
if you're using G Suite for your tool of applications,
then this lets you get work done online really efficiently.
But what else is there to do with the operating system,
what else should we know about
apart from just working online?
Some of the questions that we get asked are,
can I print?
Yes, you can.
Chrome OS will connect to your printer.
Can I work with files?
Yes, you can.
You can insert a USB memory stick
and you can access your files
and you can open PDFs
and you can work even with Microsoft documents as well,
using the Android versions of Word and Excel.
And so you've got lots of ways of working inside Chrome OS.
Let me show you what some of those look like.
So here we have the File Browser inside of Google Chrome,
and you can see here that I've got my downloads,
which is kind of like my local files.
There is local storage included in Chromo OS,
so that means that internally in your Chromebook
or your Chromebox,
which is the desktop version,
will have some storage for you
to download files from the internet and save them locally.
And they could be any kind of files,
it could be a Microsoft file,
it could be a Google file,
could be a PDF,
could be an image, could be a movie file,
they'll all work fine on your Chromebook.
Next up you can see if I open up,
I've got a link to my Google Drive,
and this works in the same way as Google File Stream does
on a Windows or a Mac machine.
I can see my My Drive,
I can see my Shared Drives and access everything there,
and Google also lets me see,
like I can on my Google Drive online computers.
And so I can actually go and look at documents
that I've backed up using Google Backup and Sync
across different machines.
But apart from that,
the file browsing is pretty straightforward.
If I was to insert a USB stick and I had files on that,
I could read and write from that USB stick.
If I was to insert the set of headphones into the computer,
I could access my audio,
anything that I was playing on the computer
from those headphones as well.
Now, Google also lets you connect to
other peripherals and devices.
And so obviously we've got internet connectivity,
I can use ethernet or I can use WiFi.
So if I've got WiFi built into a particular device,
I can connect to any WiFi network there.
I can use Bluetooth for a Bluetooth headset,
or I might want to connect to other devices
like a handsfree, I can do that,
and it's got some other cool little features
like night shift to
take it a bit easier on your eyes late at night
if you're working on a laptop.
I can cast my screen,
which actually shares my computer screen right up to my TV
if I'm using a Google Chrome Cast,
and you can see there's even things like
Do Not Disturb for notification management.
Pretty much anything you expect to get
from a normal computer,
you can do on Chrome OS.
The major drawbacks or the differences are
that you can't install a Mac application
or a windows application.
So you can't download Final Cut Pro or Adobe Photoshop
and install it locally on this machine.
The only apps that will run are Chrome ad-ons,
Chrome plugins or Android apps.
Now, that's not actually that limiting
because right now
there's a lot of apps in the Android play store,
and that gives you a lot of options
for getting work done on this local machine.
But you're not able to install a CD and
install MYOB on the desktop version or
install the desktop version of Microsoft office.
You would have to use
the Android version of Microsoft Office
to access each one of those tools.
Now, what are some of the upside advantages
of using Chrome OS over other
operating systems like windows or Mac?
One of the best things is that Chrome OS
automatically updates.
Google provides free updates
which happen automatically in the background.
Google actually has
two copies of the operating system on every computer,
and while one is updating,
you can continue using the operating system.
So you can say goodbye to having to wait
10 or 15 minutes or even an hour
for your computer to update when you've shut down
or when you've done a restart.
Google updates
the backup operating system in the background,
and then it does a simple reboot
and it automatically updates the operating system
and the computer to the latest version
just with a restart.
And that restart only takes a couple of seconds,
because Google isn't having to launch a whole
desktop operating environment,
they only have to pretty much run a Chrome Browser
and some basic file management inside Chrome OS,
it's a very simple system.
One of the other great things about
the Google Chrome ecosystem
is that there are no known viruses, malware,
CryptoLocker threats that can penetrate the system,
because it's a highly protected enclosed system
and it's all encrypted and secured by your Google account.
Someone would have to log in
and hack into your Google account
to get access to anything that is stored
on your local computer,
and this gives you a lot of safety and security,
and it means that Chrome OS
is just not susceptible to viruses,
malware or hacking.
It's one of the most secure
operating systems available on the market today,
and it is excellent for students, business leaders,
any employee inside your business
for a versatile and secure machine.
Now, what are some of the criticisms for Chrome OS?
Well, in the consumer market,
people like to play games and
Google hasn't had that many options available for Chromes
as of the recording of this video.
Now, Google have launched their Stadia product,
which is a game streaming service
and that does work on Chrome OS.
Google are also allowing
beefier Chromebooks and Chrome devices to
actually potentially run steam gaming console in the future,
which will mean that you'll be able
to download and run games on the Chrome devices.
I'm curious to see where that goes,
it hasn't fully yet been released,
but I'm interested to what happens in the future.
For business users, the biggest criticisms are
that one app that they just can't access,
whether it normally runs on a Mac or on a Windows machine,
for whatever reason,
it's not going to install on the Chrome OS,
and that's a little bit of a dilemma.
If you've got a particular user
or a particular profile of user within your business
who needs access to a certain app
and it just doesn't run on the Chromebook,
you're gonna need to find another solution.
That may mean
reviewing the application that you're using and
trying to find online alternatives.
Like, if right now you're using Photoshop,
perhaps you could switch to Canvas,
which runs great in the browser,
or it may be a matter of
hosting that application in a cloud service of some sort
and sharing it down to the Chromebook
via remote desktop or Citrix app development.
Both of those work great on Chrome,
and they're a viable option for a legacy application,
which would normally need a windows or an Apple computer
that can't be installed on the Chrome device.
The top advantages of Chrome devices are typically
that they have much longer battery life,
they're much cheaper,
they're much more secure,
you don't have to worry about viruses or anything else.
And so as a machine to roll out for a fleet to your team,
it's a really good choice for you and your business.
The other great thing about Chrome OS
is they're all cloud managed.
So you can manage the fleet of your Chrome devices
via the Google admin panel.
If you wanna set a common desktop wallpaper for everyone,
or enforce certain password standards,
or maybe you want to set when and where the computer
can or can't be used,
you can do all of that via the G Suite admin panel
without having to physically access the device
or change settings manually and locally on the device.
The great thing about Google's setup where there's
two distinct operating systems
and it keeps it backup copy there,
is if anything ever goes wrong with a Chromebook,
you can do a remote wipe,
it's called a power wash,
and that will automatically reset the Chromebook
back to its default state.
Your staff member that you're supporting
can sign back in with their business email address,
all of their information will be downloaded from the cloud
and automatically there'll be back to work.
This process can be done in under five minutes.
Where typically, if you have a windows or a Mac machine
that's having some software issues and you have to
reinstall the operating system,
it would require an it professional to spend
half a day or a day reinstalling
and then re-getting that operating system back up to speed
and getting the person back up and running
with all of their data.
This is a fundamentally different way of working.
And while it's a simple way of working,
like using an iPad Pro is your primary device,
you miss out on some of the things that you can do
with a full blown desktop browser or a desktop computer,
but you find that in the simplicity, there is power.
I know for myself being a CEO of my business,
I wanna keep focused on a single task,
and I don't want a million distractions popping up for me.
And I find that the simplicity
of the Chrome operating system suits me great.
If you're a business owner or a business leader
and you're interested in Chrome OS for your organization,
then jump on a call with our team.
We've got a free private
complimentary consultation for your business.
If you're a G suite user currently
or if you've not yet embarked on your Google journey,
and you're interested in learning more
about the Chrome world, both the hardware and the software.
We can help businesses as you're growing and scaling
to develop an IT policy,
IT management practices,
and help you to achieve operational flow,
so that you and your team are adopting technology well
and using it as leveraged as possible in your business.
We wanna help small and medium businesses to succeed,
and for staff members to be productive
and work well together in a happy workspace.
We know that great technology creates productivity
and therefore supports great teams.
If you're interested in working with us,
jump on the links below
and our team will be able to help,
and if you're not yet ready to engage with our team,
you might be interested in joining our free group
for business owners using G Suite.
We have a community that's online inside Facebook,
and if you join that link,
you'll be able to join other business owners
who are utilizing G Suite
and looking to get more out of the platform.
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Till next time, see yah.