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With the recent release of Google’s Chromebooks, you might find yourself asking if you really want to spend your hard-earned cash on one. Don’t worry – we’ll show you how you can test out all aspects of a Chromebook without having to sink any of your cash into the hardware.

The good news is that the Chrome OS project is an open source one, so anyone with an interest and some spare time can go online, grab the source code and compile their own version of the operating system. The even better news is that someone has already done that for you.

A helpful chap called Hexxeh has been churning out automated nightly builds of the Chrome OS for quite some time, and making them available to download at www.bit.ly/mayVHY. This makes it easy to try out Chrome OS in various forms, from running it on a virtual machine to booting it on real hardware. The latter part ranges from booting a USB drive to ultimately installing it on a suitable netbook, even in a dual-boot system.

1 Find nightly builds

Go to http://chromeos.hexxeh.net and take a look at the list of nightly builds that are automatically compiled ready to run for VMWare, VirtualBox or primed for a USB installation. The latest will usually work fine but if you have problems you can usually get around them by choosing a slightly older version instead.

2 Get Image Writer

Once you’ve snatched the USB version, you’ll also need Image Writer, which is a little utility that will write the image to the USB flash drive. Chrome OS takes up less than 2GB of space, so you could even opt to install this on an SD card, as long as your netbook or laptop supports the boot options.

3 Give it the boot

Most up to date laptops and netbooks have very f exible boot option hiding away within the BIOS, so it doesn’t matter you’ve used a standard USB drive or an SD card. Once you’ve powered up your Chromebook-to-be, press the key for the BIOS or the Boot menu (often [Delete], [F2] or [F12]) and then choose the inserted media.

4 Get connected

Although you don’t always need an internet connection to use a Chromebook, you do need one for the first boot, because it runs you through a setup procedure that requires either a wired Ethernet or wireless network connection in order to create a link between your Chromebook and your Google account.

5 Shiny chrome

The basic vanilla builds that are created by Hexxeh come with no additional bells or whistles, so your first impression of Chrome OS will be very dull. The OS runs all of the Chrome browser extensions, so head to http://chrome.google.com/webstore and grab any extensions you’re likely to need, like Google Cloud Print.

6 Together forever

If you decide to keep Chrome OS on your device permanently, there’s an installer built into the OS itself. Press [Ctrl]+ [Alt]+[T], type Shell, then type /Usr/sbin/chromeos-install. You’ll be prompted for the admin password, which is ‘facepunch’. Be warned, this wipes the internal drive, but you could opt for a dual-boot version.

This feature is taken from PC Plus Issue 311 – on sale now. To view the expanded feature, as well as more fantastic articles, tutorials and reviews, click here to buy the digital version of PC Plus issue 311 now. You can also subscribe to PC Plus or buy PC Plus Magazine back issues.