When Google announced that they would make a PC operating system in summer 2009, there were many who hoped that Microsoft would finally get proper competition in this market. Now, seven years later, Chromebooks with Google ChromeOS well established in the market, but have never been near a threat to Microsoft and Windows.
Earlier this year announced however Google that Chromebooks will soon have the opportunity to to run Android apps, which will surely lead to more open their eyes to these affordable computers.
Android as Windows replaces?
But what to run Android on your PC? Operating support for both mouse and keyboard, and many have scratched their heads over that Google chose Android as a starting point when they made ChromeOS. This is where the company Jide comes into play.
They have made Remix OS – a circumscribed Android edition is designed and optimized to run on ordinary PCs.
Remix OS looks and behaves very similarly to Windows and ChromeOS. You have the desktop, taskbar, Start menu, windows that can be adjusted, minimized and maximized – and you have Google Play, with access to more than 2 million apps that cover most needs.
We first wrote about Remix OS was in January this year. Since then the system has become much more mature, and version 3 is based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. We have test driven operating system on one of our test PCs in recent days.
How to do it
First, download a ZIP file that contains an ISO file on around 900MB with the operating system itself, as well as a single installer that helps you install the operating system to a memory stick or hard drive / SSD yours.
the former is by far the safest way to test the operating system, but make that you use a memory stick with good reading and writing performance, so you ensure the best possible experience.
If you install Remix OS to the hard drive / SSD, you’ll be able to switch between Windows and Remix OS during startup.
How it works in practice
We chose the latter on a Samsung 9 series laptop from 2014, where the entire installation process was done in under a minute. Next time we started the PC, we chose Remix OS from the boot menu. This was followed by another reboot, and a clarification process that took a few minutes. Then loaded the operating system and took us directly to the desktop. No login needed.
Immediately after this we got questions about what apps we wanted to install. Here we were presented with a variety of popular apps, including Netflix, Microsoft Office, YouTube and Spotify. When this was done, we were ready to explore the operating system.
All of drivers for video card, sound card, memory card reader, wireless network cards, USB ports and webcams were in place and worked “out of the box.” As a Windows user, I had no any trouble navigating around, start and end apps and do ordinary tasks – with the help of keyboard and mouse.
The apps, which are often written to be used on small screens, run mostly in windows corresponding to a mobile screen in shape and size, with the exception of including Chrome, which ran in full screen. You can always resize app windows, and run all in full – which on a tablet. This scalability is often very good Android app.
Better battery life?
Not once we experienced that the fans in the PC started, probably because the operating system and apps are very easy run. In that sense, our PC with Core i5 processor pure overkill.
This can also results in better battery life. We have not measured accurately, but that percentage disappearing somewhat slower with Remix OS than Windows on our PC, is entirely clear.
This would also mean that you can drive Remix OS on older hardware with good results . Jide recommends 2GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and at least 8GB of free space on the disk / SSD.
Room for improvement
Not all Android apps and games running smoothly with the mouse and keyboard, so you have a touchscreen PC, it will certainly be a advantage in many cases.
We also found that some apps crashed or did not work optimally, including Skandia Bank app. You will find, however, a special committee of “approved” applications in Remix Central, which has a shortcut on the desktop . These apps will be tested and inspected in Remix OS.
One thing we miss is the ability to select text by clicking and dragging the mouse over an area. This functionality has not developers managed to get in place. The same applies to drag and drop between app windows. Right-click menus available, but is more the exception than the rule.
it is also part of the story that the whole Remix OS refused to start on another PC we tried to install it, so the system has a way to go before it becomes quite on par with Windows – naturally.
Remix OS is nevertheless among the most exciting Windows options we have tested and we are surprised if Google does not at one time or another will be interested in purchasing up Jide. With a little more refinement can be really good.
Free
Do you fancy trying Remix OS, you can find more information and download the installer www.jide.com/remixos. It should, according developers work on most PCs, including Apple Macs.
There is no charge to use the system, but note that it comes with some apps that are considered to be advertising.
See also:
Everything about Windows 10
Make your own Linux memory stick
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