14 DAY TRIAL // Chromebooks are affordable laptops with decent specifications that sell for $150 / €136 and up. The reason they are called Chromebooks is that these laptops ship with Google’s Chrome OS - a light operating system allowing you to stay connected all the time.
Folks have been known to tinker with Chromebook and some have even installed Ubuntu on it. But as some of our readers have suggested, Chromebooks would be even better… with Windows on board. Well, it turns out that, if you really want to, you can install Microsoft’s OS on a Chromebook.
Installing Windows on the Acer C720 Chromebook was done before, but some hardware wasn't initially supported. So Reddit user Coolstar got the idea of porting some Linux drivers to Windows, which allowed them to finally run Windows 8.1 pretty smoothly on the said Chromebook.
Windows 8.1 runs pretty well on the Acer C720 Chromebook
As of late May 2015, Coolstar succeeded to get some features working, including keyboard, speakers, headphone jack, hardware accelerated video, and HDMI video output.
However, take into consideration that the track still won’t work, so you will need to bring in an external mouse. Also, brightness control and HDMI audio are still amiss.
The Acer C720 Chromebook is a light, little laptop that arrives with an 11.6-inch display and 1366 x 768 pixel resolution. It is offered in combination with an Intel Celeron 2955U Haswell processor or a Core i3 Haswell SoC (graphic drives might not work with the chip), if you opt for the more expensive model.
Acer throws in up to 4GB of RAM and up to 32GB of solid-state storage. However, given the fact that Windows 8.1 is a large operating system, Coolstart recommends replacing the SSD with at least 64GB.
If you want to pick up a brand new Acer C720, you will probably have to take around $200 / €181 out of your pocket, but if you don’t mind refurbished, you could get it for much less.
Still, there are probably other, cheaper Chromebook models coming from the likes of HP, ASUS and others. But you’d better keep in mind that the BIOS/boot-loader limitations might make it impossible for Windows to install on some Chromebook models.
If you’re looking to buy a laptop now, you could always choose to go for the ASUS EeeBook X205 or HP Stream 11, as they come with Windows 8.1 pre-installed, but if you already have an Acer C720 and you want to see what Windows looks like, you can try Coolstar’s way of going about things.
