Chromebook

New updates coming “soon” to Google Classroom will let teachers notify students about homework due dates right on the home screens of their Chromebooks.

Those Chromebooks should also last longer, as Google announced last year that it will provide 10 years of automatic updates to Chromebooks, but only for laptops bought in 2021 or later. That, unfortunately, doesn’t cover Chromebooks bought in 2020 at the start of the pandemic, which are now breaking down or reaching their end-of-life expiration dates.

HP’s new Chromebook Plus devices aim to fulfill the needs of today’s young people — who are looking, HP has determined, for “technology that is flexible, adaptable, and delivers powerfully immersive experiences, while keeping the planet in mind.”

The Plus, coming in 14-inch and 15.6-inch options, will feature 12th-Gen Intel processors, AI video conferencing tools. The 15-incher ($599.99) has a 144Hz screen option; the 14-incher ($749.99) has recycled material in the cover and hinge. Both go on sale October 8th.

So, technically this feature has been floating around for a while in developer channels and such, but it’s been officially announced today with the release of Chrome OS 116. As of now, Chrome OS enables owners of RGB Chromebooks to customize the colors of each color zone.

This is particularly interesting since customizable RGB is, stereotypically, a gaming laptop thing, and gaming Chromebooks are...well, they’re not doing so hot over at Google these days.

Google launched the feature in beta during Google I/O in May. The company says the update, ChromeOS M115, is coming out “soon.”

We’re about to see one in the wild. Asus has launched its Chromebook CM34 Flip, one of the first models that will include AMD’s new Ryzen 7020 C-Series processors (which are basically the same chips that AMD released for budget laptops last September, but nevertheless).

The CM34 has Wi-Fi 6, a 16:10 screen, a full-sized backlit keyboard, a physical webcam cover, and a starting price of $499. Asus is claiming 13 hours of battery life, rather than 17, so there’s that.

Chrome OS was not particularly, shall we say, present at the Google I/O event on Wednesday, but there was one neat announcement: You can now stream apps to a Chromebook from an Android phone. This is something you could already do in Windows, but it’s nice to see Chrome OS hopping on the train.

To get this set up, Google’s instructions say to make sure Phone Hub is enabled on your Chromebook and that you’re running Android 13 or newer.

CNBC reports that Google is scaling back its spending on employee services, according to a companywide email from finance chief Ruth Porat. One particularly unfortunate detail: non-engineer employees will now be issued Chromebooks by default, rather than the “range of offerings, such as Apple MacBooks” that were available previously.

Does this mean we might finally get a version of Slack that works on Chrome OS? Sorry, trying not to jinx it.

If you recently tried to use Zoom on your Chromebook and it didn’t work, don’t panic — that’s because Zoom recently replaced its older ChromeOS app with a new progressive web app. If you haven’t moved to the new app yet, here’s how to do it.

Sometimes, it’s the little things that can be the most irritating — like when you’re trying to use your Chromebook as a tablet and you rotate the screen and the picture won’t rotate with it. Here’s how to fix that.