Neverware is a New York-based developer of operating systems. Its flagship product, CloudReady, transforms an organization’s existing hardware to have the user experience and management of a Chromebook. Their investors include Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Rethink Education, and Collaborative Fund.
CloudReady has already transformed more than 75,000 PCs and Macs worldwide, allowing them to deliver the same experience as Google’s popular Chromebooks. To amplify this impact and reach even more users, Neverware has launched support for dual-booting CloudReady with Microsoft Windows on the same computer.
Although Neverware charges schools to license the software, individual users can download CloudReady for free from the company’s website.
In order to get Chrome running on your old computer, all you need to do is create a CloudReady USB installer with the .zip file from Neverware’s website and the Chromebook Recovery Utility, insert the USB drive into the computer you want to convert, boot from USB and follow the instructions.
With CloudReady’s dual-boot feature, existing data will be preserved and users will be able to choose between Windows and CloudReady each time they power on their computer. This innovative and flexible approach will remove barriers, costs, and risks for organizations and consumers in a way that no other product ever has.
It’s worth noting that the name Chromebook is trademarked by Google, so that’s not technically what you’re getting when you install CloudReady on your computer. But Neverware uses Chromium, the open source version of the Chrome operating system, which makes for a nearly identical experience, complete with all the apps and services you’d find on an actual Chromebook.
In larger organizations, where adoption of Chromebooks has been slower because of reliance on legacy Windows applications, dual-boot removes a major barrier to Google’s next-gen ecosystem.
