Technologies

8 Chromebook Myths To Ignore When Laptop Shopping

Chromebooks today are much better than they were upon initial release in 2011.

Chromebooks, or laptops that run on Google’s ChromeOS, have been around for more than a decade and have gone from basic internet appliances to excellent laptops for personal or professional use.

Their user-friendly nature also makes them a good option for people who are less tech-savvy.

A lot of negative ideas about Chromebooks have circulated over the last 10 years too, including the fallacy that you can’t use them offline and that the devices are underpowered. Some of these critiques may have been true when Chromebooks were first released, but they have since been corrected or improved upon.

Here are eight Chromebook misconceptions to ignore when looking for a new laptop.

1. Chromebooks are underpowered

This is a common misconception that dates back to the Chromebook’s launch, when it was mainly used for accessing the internet via the Chrome browser. As more people started using Chromebooks, including for school and business, Google increased the functionality of the operating system and Chromebook makers improved their performance to take advantage of new features. Now, like other laptops, you get what you pay for with a Chromebook.

ChromeOS, the Chromebook operating system, still has low hardware requirements, though. This means Chromebooks can provide basic functionality for less money. Despite the low hardware requirements, Chromebooks can perform as well as — and in some cases better than — similarly priced Windows laptops.

«New Windows laptops for $200 are few and far between and, frankly, are rarely worth buying,» CNET’s Joshua Goldman writes. «Finding a good $200 Chromebook, on the other hand, is pretty easy to do… Premium Chromebooks typically start between $400 and $500, but can easily run more than $1,000 depending on your needs.»

The Lenovo Duet 3, for example, is $379, and it can stream videos, run almost any Android app and be used for cloud gaming via Nvidia GeForce Now or Xbox Cloud Gaming. Other premium Chromebooks, like the CNET Editor’s Choice award-winning Acer Chromebook Spin 714, are more expensive, but they can have up to 10 hours of battery life. They can also stream videos and handle productivity apps like Slack with ease.

2. You can only use Chrome on Chromebooks

It’s understandable — yet incorrect — to think that Chromebooks, which run on ChromeOS, can only use a Chrome browser. You can run other browsers, like Brave and Firefox, on your Chromebook.

To use these browsers, you need to download the apps from the Google Play Store. While those apps are meant for Android phones, they will work on your Chromebook. Some apps have tablet support so they look cleaner and use the additional space on the screen of your Chromebook. Their windows can also be resized just like traditional desktop software.

3. Chromebooks aren’t safe to use

Chromebooks have multiple layers of protection to keep your data safe. For example, you’ll get automatic updates from Google so your device always has the latest patches. Chromebooks also run individual websites and apps in sandboxes to contain threats.

These security features make Chromebooks more secure than many other laptops. According to CVE Details, a security vulnerability datasource, ChromeOS has had about 50 security vulnerabilities since 2010. In comparison, Windows 10 has had almost 3,000 vulnerabilities since 2013.

4. Chromebooks don’t work offline

While the first models were designed to be used online only, Google changed that long ago so that many Chromebook apps will work with or without an internet connection. You can use your Chromebook to take notes, watch movies and listen to music when offline. You can even check and respond to emails or view, edit or create documents in Google Drive. In these cases, whatever emails you are sending or changes you are making to documents won’t go through until you reconnect to the internet.

5. You can’t game on Chromebooks

Years ago you could only play web-based games on your Chromebook but since 2016, you can play many of the games in the Google Play Store. That includes games like Roblox and Apex Legends Mobile. You can also play games from Steam, Nvidia’s GeForce Now, Amazon Luna and Xbox Cloud Gaming on your Chromebook.

Google is even selling Chromebooks made for cloud gaming. The Acer Chromebook 516 GE, Asus Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip and Lenovo Ideapad Gaming Chromebook are the first three gaming Chromebooks that let anyone play AAA computer games without a high-end gaming PC using cloud services.

6. Chromebooks aren’t good for photo or video editing

For basic editing, the Google Play Store has a number of photo and video editing apps, including Adobe’s Android apps and LumaFusion, which are Chromebook-compatible. Google also unveiled a new video editor and movie maker in Google Photos in July.

If you’re a business professional and need more advanced photo- or video-editing capabilities, like Adobe InDesign or Photoshop, you’ll still want a Windows, Mac or Linux laptop. However, if you are putting together a family photo album or a video for a family reunion, Chromebooks have everything you need.

7. Chromebooks can’t run Microsoft Office

Yes, you can run Microsoft Office on your Chromebook. However, instead of using the software suite made for Windows or MacOS, you’ll use Microsoft’s Office progressive web apps, or PWAs.

PWAs are like the mobile versions of websites, but they give you more features, like offline use and push notifications. There are PWAs for Microsoft Office 365 that work great on Chromebooks. Besides having to download the PWAs, using them is the same as using the web versions of Office 365. Microsoft Office power users might find that Office PWAs aren’t as robust as the desktop software, but the PWAs will likely meet most people’s needs.

8. You can’t use Windows on a Chromebook

This one is half true. While you can’t install Windows onto your Chromebook, you can access the operating system via remote access. You can use remote computer access tools, like Parallels for Chrome or Chrome’s Remote Desktop, to connect your Chromebook to a Windows computer.

Parallels lets you run full-featured Windows applications and is mainly meant for business users. Chrome’s Remote Desktop takes minutes to set up and can be used to access Windows — or Mac — software on your Chromebook. Is this cheating? Maybe, but I won’t tell if you won’t.

For more on Chromebooks, check out these eight Chromebooks for any budget, how to get Steam on your Chromebook and how to run Windows Office on your Chromebook.

Technologies

You Can’t Trust Your Car’s Driving Assistance System Yet, AAA Report Finds

Both hands-on and hands-off systems required human intervention to avoid accidents in this study.

Technologies

Google’s AI Mode Is Getting New Agentic Features for Restaurant Reservations and More

AI Mode can now do most of the work to find dinner reservations for you.

Google’s AI Mode is getting new agentic capabilities and expanding to 180 new countries and territories around the world, Google announced Thursday. AI Mode allows you to ask questions directly to Google and it’ll kick off a series of searches on your behalf. From there, it will surface relevant information to your query without the need to do any of the deep research yourself. It changes the way you search for things online, and it’s getting even smarter with this latest rollout.

Powered by DeepMind’s Project Mariner, the latest additions bring us further into the agentic AI future we’ve been promised for some time, directly from a search box. Instead of just finding things for you, AI Mode can now do things for you, like finding dinner reservations, flights or concert tickets. The update also brings personalized recommendations and link-sharing capabilities for easier collaboration with friends and family.

Most of the new features are either limited to premium AI subscribers and tucked behind an experiment in Google Labs, but it might not take long before they’re a standard part of your future search experience.

Google did not immediately respond to CNET’s request for further comment.

Restaurant recommendations

Instead of searching for restaurant reservations and then clicking on a specific website to make a reservation, AI Mode surfaces everything you need to complete the action right there. Since it’s contextually aware, you can add specificities to your query that a typical Google search wouldn’t handle well.

You can add the type of cuisine, number of people, time and location to a single query, and AI Mode will get to work and display real-time restaurant reservation time slots to choose from.

Google says it’s partnered with OpenTable, Resy, Tock, Ticketmaster and several other companies to make finding and doing what you want easier, since you won’t have to put in the legwork yourself.

This feature is currently rolling out to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the US who have enabled the specific experiment in Labs.

Personalized recommendations

Another experiment that’s currently available in the US (that also needs to be enabled in Labs) is personalized recommendations. Google says it’s starting with dining-related recommendations, which implies more options will be on the way in the future.

The experiment will use your past conversations with AI Mode, places you’ve interacted with on Search and Maps to provide suggestions tailored specifically to you.

Share AI Mode links with others for collaboration

If you’re planning a vacation or a party, you can now share your research directly with others with a new link-sharing feature built into AI Mode. People who interact with the link will be sent to the last response sent by AI Mode and can continue the conversation on their own to do more exploration on the topic. The original sender of the links can manage them and delete them at any time.

For more, don’t miss everything Google announced at its Pixel 10 event.

Technologies

IPhone or Android, Here’s How to Finally Escape That Endless Group Chat

Done with a group chat? Here’s how to ghost it on any service.

One reason people prefer group chats in Apple’s iMessage or RCS texting is the extra control and security these platforms provide. If everyone in your group is using iPhones, or if you’re on Android chatting through RCS, you’ll get features like typing indicators, high-quality media sharing, and the option to mute or leave a conversation when you need fewer notifications.

The biggest advantage is privacy. Both iMessage and RCS group chats offer end-to-end encryption, so your conversations stay secure. The only time that doesn’t apply is when a thread includes a mix of iPhone and Android users, which limits encryption support.

Knowing these differences can help you manage your chats more effectively, whether you’re keeping up with friends, planning events, or just looking for a little more control over your notifications.

And with RCS support with iOS 18, group chats that include a mix of iPhone and Android participants have more features than ever — but it’s not at the level you’ll experience when a conversation is fully on iMessage or Google Messages. «Green bubble chats» from an iPhone to an Android phone can now include typing indicators, higher-quality media and easier group chats.

However, RCS conversations between the iPhone and Android phones don’t include encryption now, but it should be added in a future update. This will hopefully give these conversations a similar level of privacy that we expect when using chat services like iMessage, WhatsApp or Signal.

Regardless of how you’re in a group chat with others, you can leave a chat. Here are the steps to leave any conversation from your phone’s texting app, regardless of whether it’s happening on iMessage, RCS or as a mixed MMS chat.

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Leaving group chats on an iPhone

You can leave group conversations on your iPhone in two ways. You can either mute a chat,which keeps you in a conversation but you no longer receive notifications about it, or you can outright leave and no longer have access to the chat.

On an iPhone, open Messages and go to the chat thread you want to leave. At the top of the screen are conversation controls, a group of icons with the participants. Tap this to open a pop-up menu. As long as your conversation has four or more participants, iOS gives you the ability to tap Leave this Conversation with red text. If your chat has three or fewer participants, though, the option is grayed out, but you can tap Hide Alerts to prevent the conversation from notifying you further. Tapping Hide Alerts also allows you to mute a conversation, letting you keep access to a chat without necessarily leaving it. These steps apply to both iMessage conversations and to those over RCS.

Hide and block MMS chats on an iPhone

Although you can’t officially leave MMS group chats, you can hide or block the conversation. It’s not as good as outright leaving a conversation (other participants will still see you as in it), but you at least have no personal evidence of the conversation continuing.

On an iPhone, visit the group chat and tap the conversation controls. Instead of seeing Leave this conversation, you will see the option to Delete and Block this conversation. If you’d rather just mute the conversation instead of deleting and blocking it, you can hit Hide Alerts to mute it.

Leave group chats on an Android phone

On an Android phone using Google Messages, visit the chat thread you want to leave. Tap the conversation’s name to bring up the Group Details menu. Within this menu is the Leave Group button. Unlike with iMessage, you can leave chats with as few as three participants.

If you want to just mute notifications, tap Notifications on the Group Details screen to bring up a window with notifications controls. This includes options to make the conversation stay Silent to prevent it from ringing your chat, and if you tap Lock Screen, a pop-up menu will give you the option to prevent notifications. Tap Don’t show notifications at all to enable.

Hide and block MMS chats on an Android phone

On an Android phone with Google Messages, follow the same steps to access options for controlling notifications. This includes visiting the MMS chat thread and then tapping either the name of the conversation or the names of the participants at the top to bring up the Group Details menu. You won’t see a Leave Group option like you did with an RCS thread, but you do get the same ability to tap Notifications to access controls for hiding the conversation. This includes the same options for turning the conversation to Silent and to select Don’t show notifications at all.

SMS vs. MMS vs. RCS

SMS stands for Short Message Service and debuted in 1992. Text messages are limited to 160 characters. MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service and supports sending photos, videos or other files and messages longer than 160 characters. MMS supports a group of people chatting in a single conversation thread, while SMS can text multiple people at once but is sent as individual messages to each person. RCS, which launched 15 years ago, is short for Rich Communication Services and can show typing indicators, read receipts and has end-to-end encryption.

While cross-platform chat apps like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram have better controls for conversations, encryption and privacy, regardless of the type of phone participants are using, they don’t support SMS, MMS or RCS. That’s why the default messaging app on most phones is still widely used, even if it means that a group chat is on a less feature-filled, unsecured standard like MMS.