Buying a laptop used to involve a straight choice between two operating systems – Windows or OS X. But now there’s Google’s Chrome OS, which offers a low-cost third option. Chromebooks running the cloud-based operating system have become very popular and it’s easy to see why. They are affordable because as long as you’re happy to carry out most of your work on the web and in your browser, they don’t require much expensive processing power.

The same principle can be applied to an old PC, so although it may not be able to run the latest version of Windows, your old computer may still have more than enough power to run the Chrome operating system. CloudReady brings the Chromebook experience to your PC and can either replace your existing Windows installation or run alongside it. The OS is aimed commercially at schools but is being given away free to home users.

What you’ll need

In addition to the CloudReady image file, which is a 600MB download from the website, you’ll need the Chromebook Recovery Utility. This is an official Google tool that lets you create recovery drives for Chromebooks but it can also be used to install Chrome OS (via CloudReady) on your PC.

It requires the Chrome browser to work. You also need an empty USB flash drive (or SD card) to write the installer to. This should have a capacity of at least 8GB, though 16GB would be better. You can pick one up on Amazon for a few dollars.

How to turn your old laptop into a Chromebook