Chromebooks Running Windows 10 Enterprise? What Has The World Come To!

You Want To Join That Chromebook To My Domain, Eh?

Business users that like Chromebooks and Google Suite rejoice for Google has worked with Parallels to allow you to run what they refer to as legacy applications, and what the rest of the world refers to as Microsoft products.  Once configured you will be able to launch the Parallels Desktop app from your mebook and pop into a local Windows VM.  There are some caveats to this process which you should be aware of though.

Firstly, this is not an inexpensive solution as you will need to pay for a Google Enterprise license, a Parallels license and a Windows license in order to install a Windows Enterprise image; which is the only version of Windows which you can do this with.  That doesn’t count the Chromebook itself, and it will have to be a higher end one as the minimum specifications include at least an Intel Core i5 or Core i7, at least 16GB of system RAM and 128GB of free local storage.  Your infrastructure will also have to support pushing images for installation over HTTP or HTTPS.

There are some benefits to this, from the nicely locked down Chrome environment and automatic security updates to the fact that the machine will be able to handle four separate OSes, Chrome OS, Android, Linux and Windows.  The Parallels integration of Windows on Chrome is not quite as smooth as how they do it with Windows on Apple but it does offer a very effective way of integrating Chromebooks into a business.

Pop by The Register for more details if you want to give it a shot.