Are you planning on using your Windows 10 computer past October?

It is possible that they'll keep providing the existing ones, but it is a certainty that they won't be issuing any new ones.

Thanks, and good afternoon.

Why are you angry?

"good afternoon."

Not dismissively, but have a good afternoon. That's all. I say that all the time. Check my posts.

Last edited Fri Sep 5, 2025, 11:20 AM - Edit history (1)

https://chromeos.google/products/chromeos-flex/

I have an old Toshiba Sattalite laptop that a friend asked me to look at few years back. I found that it had a damaged boot sector and although I was able to extract some files off of it for him by booting off a USB stick with some utilities I was unable repair windows boot.. He wasn't interested in repairing it and told me to toss it or keep it. I managed to get Fedora Linux running on it despite the bad boot sector and offered him that but he declined. Eventually the drive started throwing more warnings mentioning that it could die at anytime so I cloned the disk to an SSD drive that was a bit bigger and replaced the damaged drive with it. Fedora Linux is Redhats free bleeding edge Linux environment.Although Fedora is really good I have a newer HP laptop running Windows 11 that I can dual boot Linux on and I'm considering installing ChromeOS Flex on the old laptop. ChromeOS boots superfast and it can run Microsoft 365 if you don't want to uses Google Docs or Libre Office.

Last edited Fri Sep 5, 2025, 11:45 AM - Edit history (1)

This is a long story. Oh, you want to hear it.

My most often used computer is a MacBook Air. It has a Silicon processor, and it runs on the newest operating system, which is Sequoia 15.6.1. I'm using it now. So that.

I have an old Dell laptop as well, an Inspiron N5050. I found it when I was walking around my neighborhood just before COVID-19 hit. Some neighbors had tossed it out, sans battery. Most Dell laptops will boot without a battery present, and this was no exception. The neighbors thought it was password protected, but they were wrong. It had multiple accounts, and one had no password. I'm not interested in their personal affairs, but enough of it runs that I'm happy.

It had started out in life running Windows 7, but I updated it to Windows 10 back in January 2020, just as COVID-19 was setting in, when Microsoft was making that option available for free. Because I spent most of my time on my work-provided computer (also a Dell), my Dell didn't see much use. I hadn't updated the Windows 10 since January 2020. After the update, the current build is 22H2.

I am now moving files around on some Kindle Fire tablets and a Samsung tablet. The Kindle Fires run on a modified Android OS. The MacBook Air does not recognize them. I tried Bluetooth and USB, but Amazon restricts their use for anything other than marketing Amazon products. Transferring files between a Fire and a Mac is a nightmare. The Samsung was the same story. It's way too much trouble to move files between it and the MBA. Windows 10, however, sees them right away, so the Dell is suddenly seeing a lot of use.

Google already knows too much about me. I just want something that recognizes Kindle Fires and Samsung tablets natively. The MBA does not do that.

However I think the concern is valid. I suspect Google knows when I have a bowel movement. I dusted off a Raspberry Pi 4 that I had that is running Debian based Raspberry Pi OS. I also have a cheaper Raspberry Pi Zero 2W as well.Although I use those for mad scientist projects the Raspberry Pi 4 is a reasonably useful and secure desktop. I was running some open-source pcb layout software called KiCad in Fedora on the old laptop but it runs much better in Windows on the newer HP laptop. For me I think turning the old laptop into a Chromebook is my next project.

Last edited Sat Sep 6, 2025, 07:25 PM - Edit history (1)

I have a recently purchased refurbished HP ProDesk 600 G5 awaiting in my closet. It has windows 11 installed.