Great Secondhand Market for Chrome OS
Posted on 06. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in Features
This may be a familiar situation for those who work on a day-to-day basis with technology issues, but an intriguing point was brought up today in the Chromium Google Group about the fact that many people have already have a secondary laptop or other older computer equipment that no longer functions as their main computer, and is only used for the internet. These devices would be a great candidate to just run Chrome OS, wouldn’t they?
In 2006, world mobile PC sales was at 80 million units. The United States alone was at 26.5 million units sold. Sooner or later, many of these older machines will no longer be used for intensive processing purposes, and they have similar technical specifications that many netbooks have. What can they be used for? Surfing the internet.
I can understand why Google and hardware manufacturers are only interested in selling Chrome OS for new computers because that is where the fat profits are. But for those of us with an extra PC just sitting around, it would be pretty cool to just load up Chrome OS and use it for internet-only purposes.
I smell a business here that could be profitable in refurbishing older computers as internet-only machines, free from sluggishness and virus problems that are rife in these machines. Besides, where are all these old computers going to go anyways? I would like to think that they are all being recycled, but I don’t really think that is actually the case.
