So you can test the Chromebook experience

Lightweight and affordable, Google Chromebooks offer a great, accessible alternative to a full-featured Windows laptop. With access to Google Docs and Android apps, Chromebooks have a lot of uses, whether for work or fun. Before you buy, though, you can try out the Chromebook experience to see if it’s right for you.

It is certainly possible to try the Chromebook experience as a virtual machine in VMWare. Technically, you have to use Chromium OS, the open-source alternative to Chrome OS. It lacks a few features, but is otherwise identical and should give you a taste of the Chromebook experience.

Open-source fans may already know that the Google Chrome browser is based on a project called Chromium. While the code for Chrome itself isn’t shared, large parts of it are based on Chromium, allowing Google to “lock down” other, Chrome-only parts of the code.