Chromebooks Gaining on iPads in School Sector | Hacker News Reader

Chromebooks Gaining on iPads in School Sector

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97 pointsdanso86 comments

Our school (K-12, east coast, I'm IT director) has purchased hundreds of both devices in the past 4 years. We started with 3:1 iPads in the first year, distributed evenly throughout the school. We very quickly realized that the iPad is not the right device for any student who ever needs to type anything, and the "enterprise" management from the MDM providers (who are handcuffed by the atrocious tools, including Apple Configurator, that Apple provides) is pretty awful compared to the outstanding and couldn't-be-easier management through the Chrome Management Console.

So now we purchase iPads for prekindergarten through second grade, and Chromebooks for 3 and 4. Starting in grade 5, we have a mandatory BYOD and the Chromebook is our recommended device. In the middle school (5-8) the Chromebook takes 65% of the market share (versus Apple 30% and other <5%). In the upper school (9-12) it's more a 50/50 split Apple/Google.

It's just so hard to discount the functionality of a real keyboard in any school where typing (and consequently writing) matters. Google Docs on an iPad is still awful, despite lots of improvements in the past few years. Still, if it were up to me, the lack of management tools for the Apple side (each device requires a LOT of manipulation by hand to install apps, update software, manage accounts, etc) would be the deciding factor and I'd never buy another iPad again.

Edit: I just wanted to clarify that our "BYOD" program 5-12 is a laptop program. That's 65% Chromebooks and ~30% Mac laptops in grades 5-8, not iPads. We don't allow the iPad for the program requirements, though we permit their use as long as the student also has a full-sized laptop.

> It's just so hard to discount the functionality of a real keyboard in any school where typing (and consequently writing) matters.

Not to mention only having to charge one device (laptop) instead of two devices (keyboard, iPad), and not having to deal with any bluetooth connectivity issues with the keyboard.

My experience as a teacher, first in a school with iPads and now in a school with laptops, as that iPads are generally viewed as toys and laptops are generally viewed as work tools. I would never recommend that any middle school or high school buy iPads.

Having said that, I would love to hear about any notably positive experiences other teachers here have had with either iPads or laptops in class (email in profile).

> Starting in grade 5, we have a mandatory BYOD and the Chromebook is our recommended device.

Is this a public school or private? In a public school I cannot imagine that that is legal since it is highly regressive. And before you say a Chromebook is "only" $150-200, that is 1/2 of someone's pay cheque and many are living pay cheque to pay cheque as is.

Even school uniforms are seen as a hardship for the poor. Doing freaking computers is just mind boggling to me.

We are a private school, but 25% of our population is here on scholarship. Those families who cannot afford one are provided a computer by the school (and often books, supplies, uniforms, and even money to go on the "optional" trips like the class ski trip, etc.)

As cableshaft said, many of our peer public schools do require students to purchase expensive supplies like calculators. We are actually moving away from requiring students to purchase a graphing calculator; instead we ask them to buy the computer (good for all subjects) and we have been providing graphing calculators in math classes for a while now.

Buying a TI graphing calculator was mandatory for my math class in 7th grade ~20 years ago, and those were around $120, or $200 if adjusted for inflation. That was at a public school, and that was only useful for a single subject, not every class in school.

Such a racket TI has going there.

and I remember it was a really big deal to buy one for my parents financially :-/

This is the season for forms and fees day for us (few?) parents. Two kids in a top level public school system (aka a rich area, plenty of prop tax revenue) and I still had to pay $224 for two grade school kids for one year of books and technology fees and PTO "contributions" and stuff.

If you make over $100K its a rounding error, and if you make under $25K (or whatever) then absolutely everything is free covered by the state, including free lunches, the real people to pity are the remaining few middle class folks. The government will get rid of them soon enough... then what?

If you read the school paperwork VERY carefully you'll find the monetary payments are technically voluntary. They're not allowed legally to not educate your kids if you don't pay until they're over 18 at the start of the school year. This probably varies greatly by state and district.

One interesting side effect I've seen is massive price increases for school supply list products... Come on Target, $3.88 retail for small pack of postit notes during "school supply season"? Talk about profiteering. Damn. A twelve pack of the same product is $3.48 at Amazon with free prime delivery. Feel sad for poor folks who can't buy at Amazon, so stuff that costs me 34 cents costs them almost ten times as much retail. I saw a lot of stuff like that, $2.99 for a dozen pencils, etc. I walked thru Target with my phone out the whole time putting in the order for supplies and buying what little was cheaper, retail.

>One interesting side effect I've seen is massive price increases for school supply list products... Come on Target, $3.88

I was also shocked. Amazon sellers were raking it in as well.

Did you consider using a Raspberry Pi 2 desktop setup or is a portable laptop much better for classrooms? I imagined it might be an advantage to have things less portable so they can be bolted down. I've been looking into http://pinet.org.uk to manage a set of Pis with an Ubuntu server.

I'm volunteering to run a code club this term but things have changed a lot since I was at school. Trying to work out what to expect although I'm in the UK so it might be different.

A portable laptop means a kid can take it home with them for homework and the like, and for older kids, means they can take it between classes. Computing's pretty ingrained in a lot of modern teaching techniques, including things like turning in homework, so anything bolted down just isn't going to work.

iPad or Chromebook, it is a loose-loose situation for the next generation.

You are training kids to use expensive device with a walled ecosystem or you are training kids to use subsidised device with in practice walled ecosystem and with a questionable privacy policy.

The future generation will have it even worse than generation who grew up with Microsoft.

Other environments don't have the ease of administration that chrome os and apple devices have. If a device is stolen, you can lock it down. The settings are automatically pushed to the device, so kids and teachers don't need to fumble with trying to figure out how to print to the classroom printer. Because it's using google apps, sharing documents is built-in, so kids don't need easily-lost thumbdrives, and don't have the frustration of losing homework due to computer problems. Finally, it's relatively inexpensive. You can get a chromebook for $150, which is a lot easier on the budget if a kid accidentally breaks their laptop.

If you want to give another option, you need to bring something to the table that's as easy to use, as easy to administer, as easy to share content, and as inexpensive. Until you can bring those things, then all you have is an inferior product for the average teacher.

> iPad or Chromebook, it is a loose-loose situation for the next generation.

To be encourage using a computing device at school, and then being forbidden from using one which can teach you actual computing.

That honestly sounds like crazy talk.

We permit any kind of laptop so long as it has a "modern" browser. I've got a few kids running Ubuntu or some other form of Linux on their PC laptops. We don't discriminate if they want to use something more complex; that said, the market speaks for itself. For early middle school, almost all parents choose the simplest option, the Chromebook.

> Still, if it were up to me, the lack of management tools for the Apple side (each device requires a LOT of manipulation by hand to install apps, update software, manage accounts, etc)

I remember that being the case a few years ago, but doesn't apple have zero-touch device enrolment and MDM these days?

That's relatively new. We haven't had to provision iPads yet this year. This is the first year in several I haven't bought any (yet). Given Apple's track record (they obviously hate schools, they do everything they can to upset school IT departments, like getting rid of their servers, breaking their directory services, making device enrollment as painful as possible) I don't have high hopes. (Sent from my Mac Pro.)

> It's just so hard to discount the functionality of a real keyboard in any school where typing (and consequently writing) matters.

Kids at that age should spend less time on a computer of any sort and more time learning penmanship so they can actually write.

When global warming/peak oil/the zombie apocalypse/other finally hits and your technology doesn't work, civilization will belong to those who learned penmanship. And like language acquisition, there is a small window of time during which a child can develop a competent hand.

Which is why we specifically target cursive handwriting skills. We're actually doubling-down with a newly revamped cursive curriculum, with the goal to graduate elementary students who can "write beautiful cursive" per the official goals. It's not an either/or proposition.

Since February we use chromebooks for taking exams at Utrecht University. The tests are just kiosk apps and the chromebooks are easily managed using Googles administrator tools. Works like a charm. Was cheap too. The whole project cost less than 200,000 euros to set up. Chromebooks are dirt cheap so when one breaks we simply replace it. I think we've got like 400-500 of them and are planning to get more because students are pretty happy with them.

http://pers.uu.nl/studenten-digitaal-tentamen-toetsvoorzieni...

(Disclosure: I'm one of the students who helped set up all the chromebooks)

In your experience, what makes a Chromebook break? My two daughters love their Chromebooks but they both cracked their screens. I suspect one was picked up by the lid, which you can do with a tablet but not a laptop. I ended up replacing them both for about $40-$45 from Amazon or eBay.

Replacement screens were pretty easy to put in, though I got impatient and yanked on the cable. Then I had to order a replacement cable. But those are relatively easy to come by as people take the parts from seriously broken Chromebooks and put them on eBay. Buying the Acer C720 line means tons of parts readily available. Not sure about other models or manufacturers.

Since february we only had one chromebook break of 400. Reason was unclear. It just wouldn't boot. We use the Acer Chromebook 13's. they actually seem pretty abuse-resistent so far. I couldn't really tell you what makes a chromebook break as we haven't had so many cases yet...

Cromebooks are in essence netbooks 2.0. Only this time round you have Google backing them from top to bottom, rather than hardware OEMs getting "good deals" from Intel and MS in exchange for dropping the concept.

Yes and no. The original netbooks claimed some ability to run native apps, but did it poorly. Chromebooks don't claim to be more than Chrome, but do that well. A small part of this is Google Docs, but a bigger part is the general rise of webapps.

> The original netbooks claimed some ability to run native apps, but did it poorly.

Back during the peak of the Netbook, my main PC went down. While I waited for parts I hooked up an ASUS Eee PC with Windows XP. Not only was it able to drive a 21" monitor, but also Skype video chat, my browser, and full screen YouTube without any stuttering or issues.

Netbooks got a bad rep' but frankly they were incredible value for money and even to this day have a somewhat unique form factor. Sure, you can buy ultrabooks, but they're a lot bigger and still heavier, plus they cost $800-1000+.

So I guess my only point is, sure, Netbooks are limited. They cannot game realistically, and full screen HD video is about the height of their potential. But they still do a lot of stuff extremely well, could run Office flawlessly, as could they run browsers.

Chromebooks have limited functionality, but not because it HAS to be that way, but because that is the product Google is selling. That's fine, but let's not pretend that Netbook's inferiority was the reason. And even if we pretend that it was, the hardware today kicks what Netbooks had in the butt.

netbooks + SSD.

Microsoft could have been close to this, but Google is really executing here.

Make no mistake, this is not about the Hardware - this is training kids on an office suite. GDocs as a long game against MS Office 365. Kids get older, habits and skills stay. Brought up on Gmail, GDocs they will have issues with Word, Excel.

MS better step up.

While I agree in terms of casual use, it is important to note that for a power user, nothing can hold a candle to Microsoft Office. I speak primarily from experience in Excel, but I am sure there are points to be made across the suite.

Excel as a business analyst's tool is far beyond any competitors. Especially since 2010, with the Power Pivot add-on, you get a seamless promotion path from analyst's desktop to a fully integrated BI solution across the enterprise.

I know I might sound a bit fanboyish above, and I'll acknowledge that I speak from my position as a BI consultant for a Microsoft partner. This being said, I'm also in a position where I have seen that transition where an analyst's local Power Pivot workbook becomes the basis for an enterprise reporting solution using SSAS and Power BI + SSRS many times.

> Excel as a business analyst's tool is far beyond any competitors.

Honestly, Excel (or any spreadsheet really) is quite clunky for a lot of these tasks.

In most of my University classes (economics/finance stream) that require me to analyse data and present it, I use R (w/ R Studio), and it's far superior - both for parsing the data, and for presenting it (and of course R is standard for any statistics course beyond the intro courses). R can even create 'pivot tables' and many other interactive HTML widgets.

And while we still learn Excel, we were also forced to learn Python and SQL.

I don't disagree with anything you've said.

The fact of the matter is that the majority of business analysts and 100%[0] of the consumers of their analysis are only comfortable with a spreadsheet. I'd say less than 50% of the business analysts we see can do more than write a join in SQL, 90% dump data straight to Excel for processing and presentation. The remaining 10% will use whatever BI tool their company has decided on.

[0] Close enough not to matter.

Note: the percentages above are based on my experience consulting with primarily non-tech-related clients and are based on my casual observations and those of my coworkers. Microsoft Excel has a stranglehold on the niche we're discussing, because it hits the sweet spot of functionality and usability for the people who are doing this work in most companies.

And I suspect it will change over time. The newer generation has much, much higher computer literacy.

Programming (Python and SQL) is required in the University I attend for any stream beyond a basic language degree. R is required for stats.

My mother is a business analyst, she uses Excel. Needs to find the IT guy to do anything with a database. Building a database and doing complex queries was an assignment in a required introductory course I took as a freshman. She thinks pivot tables are black magic and prides herself on knowing how to make them. We did pivot tables in two 50-minute classes.

I don't doubt your experience at all. But I do think Excel's stranglehold is/will weaken - it's clunky, and newer generations are learning programming even in non-CPSC streams.

The one thing that drives me mad about the Chromebooks is Google Cloud Print. We don't use it very often and every time we do, it's broken. I don't know if it's something in our Brother printer or on the Chromebooks and I really, really, really don't care.

I just want to be able to connect the Chromebook to the printer and print.

AirPrint, on the same printer, works every time from my MacBook. But it doesn't require a "printer manager" to figure out what the printer's IP # is, point a browser to it, login, then use the admin interface to give permission to people via email and those people to click on the email.

It's Linux underneath so I don't understand why that can't be used to talk to CUPS or LPD or something similar in the same way the file system is used.

Google Cloud Print is definitely a weak link in my opinion. I've set up a full chromebook deployment for my daughter's school including rollout of GCP, and there are still occasional hiccups with printing (for example management of a stuck queue is obfuscated).

However it has improved a lot and management (once you get your head around it) is really great.

For example, you can easily provision printers to either groups or devices, so teachers can be provisioned on the user level while students are restricted to printing from provisioned devices.

My boys have been using Chromebooks for school work both at home and in school for a couple years now, and we've had the same issue here. I don't think they print stuff up at school often (if ever). The silver lining is that now they have to share their work with me or my wife, so we get a chance to look at it before they can turn it in. But yeah, being able to print correctly would be real nice.

The problem with a tablet is that it makes for a terrible input device. Tablets are awesome for media consumption, though.

Yeah, once the kids are old enough that the majority of work is writing, iPads aren't great.

Can't you simply add a Bluetooth keyboard? I think cost is the major factor.

Still more expensive, still a smaller screen, a smaller and less able keyboard, still no mouse selection (e.g. a quick select these letters, copy and paste, takes much longer on an ipad), and you're now dealing with multiple parts and multiple batteries.

I don't really see the appeal over a Chromebook. iPads I'd love for e.g. reading books, watching course material videos (e.g. the Treehouse app for watching programming videos is wonderful until you get to the coding challenges) etc, but for doing work a keyboard makes the iPad a bit better but it doesn't come close to closing the gap to a Chromebook in my opinion.

Sure. But now you have a two part device, with more that can go wrong, and broadly speaking a worse typing experience.

There's something to be said for the stereotypical laptop form factor.

There sure is something to be said... They're horrible keyboards. We're going to give more kids RSI.

http://looknohands.me/

http://24ways.org/2014/dont-push-through-the-pain/

http://markmcb.com/2014/10/13/severe-hand-rsi-pain-and-recov...

We need more wireless ergonomic keyboards.

https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/16/the-model-01-an-heir...

I guess they're realising that they're slightly more useful than iPads, and cheaper.

It's all about Google Docs. My kids' elementary school has gone completely gDocs for word processing and presentations (teacher and student areas). No more thumb drives for collaboration, and bringing work home is transparent.

I don't think it has to be one thing... I think that they are less expensive, and more usable are big things... having a separate keyboard for typing on is definitely a better use case for many over an on-screen keypad that takes up half the screen.

gDocs is probably a big influence as well... as an all around value, I really like the Chromebooks... from a security standpoint, I tend to like them for mom & granda even more... (with uBlock)

They're also easier to centrally manage and are completely user agnostic devices. iPads can be made to be use agnostic devices also, but you have to disable almost all of the built in apps (since iCloud doesn't really accomplish it), and have people sign into some online service each time (e.g. GApps, Office 365, etc).

There's something to be said for a device where you can just grab a new one off of the laptop cart, install nothing, and login as any user with the full experience available.

Windows domain-connected PCs kinda accomplish that, but with a lot more management overhead.

I never tried FireFox Portable ... hmmm, looks like it requires a Windows machine (or a Linux box running Wine)

That might have been interesting if Mozilla had been able to get it to run on Macs.

We have a spare/guest Chromebook and it's been nice to hand it to one of my two daughters when they've cracked the screen. I'm not in IT but I'm just imagining how much easier Chromebooks would make my life. Especially if the management software is even halfway-good.

My daughter lost a morning's work because she didn't save her composition in Microsoft Word (I think) on a MacBook. She's used to Google Docs automatically saving everything for her on her Chromebook.

I'm sure that Microsoft Word can be set to automatically save but somebody probably has to do that. And the school might have disabled it because the kids are sharing the MacBooks and still using thumb drives.

Microsoft Word automatically saves backup copies of files, and has done for at least a decade.

Yes, but it seems reasonable that it would be turned off for laptops that are swapped every class, whether Windows or Macs (in this case).

If Bobby or Betty just lets it save, now you have to find the laptop the doc was automatically saved to.

Or maybe it was saved to the machine instead of her thumb drive and the IT guy just told her she lost it.

I try to do tech support for my kids and parents hands-on because details that don't matter to them do matter to the OS or apps.

I have two kids in elementary school, K and 2nd grade. The last few years the school district has been experimenting with Chromebook carts they would send to various classrooms once or twice a week. This year, they went with Chromebooks for all students K-12. The kids bring them home in the evening and are expected to bring them to school every day. The K's have touch screen Chromebooks to help mitigate their lack of typing skills.

I'm really interested to see how they will be using them. They have already been using google docs and they have both been talking about email. Maybe they will finally come to appreciate the vanity domains I registered for them when they were born :)

Tablets, generally speaking, are for consuming content. Laptops are better devices for creating content...

I'd have thought so but my daughters prefer their Chromebooks to their Nooks running CyanogenMod. Part of that is the Chromebooks don't have to be held: the screen can be adjusted to the proper angle without a stand. They're sprawled on the floor or huddled in a chair.

Some of that is that Flash works on Chromebooks, not on tablets. Eventually Flash will be dead but there are still times that I end up closing a browser tab because I don't have Flash installed for Safari on my MacBook.

Part of it is that Chromebooks are faster than tablets. I find pages are much snappier on a Chromebook than my iPad Air. A huge chunk of that may be due to uBlock Origin on the Chromebooks and ad-blocking and tracking not available on iOS. iOS9 might make quite a difference.

Perhaps generally speaking, but there's huge overlap. I've written tens of thousands of words worth of documents on my iPad and thousands of lines of Python code (in Pythonista). I find it very convenient to use on the train. There are excellent art, animation and music apps for tablets. My kids have an iPad Mini each, but the eldest is starting secondary school soon so I expect we'll need to get her a laptop soon. I think they complement each other. For the best of both woods, use both for the things here best at. Yes I know not everyone can afford that, but that doesn't stop it being true.

In the end it all boils down to inputs.

Once you hitch a keyboard onto a tablet, there is no functional diffrerence between it, a laptop, or this new iteration of the netbook.

Not really. The tablets also lack any kind of mouse support (well, at least iPads do). A lot of software is optimised for mouse+keyboard, ton of it is optimised for touch input, but there are not that many that support touch + keyboard.

So while people are up in arms with Windows 10 and latest 7/8 updates, they are ok with giving children information to Google!?

And what info are they giving to Google?

Their search history for school projects which is collected and sorted by an algorithm?

Everything that they do on the "cloud" or did ChromeOS started using native applications client side only?

> And what info are they giving to Google? Their search history for school projects which is collected and sorted by an algorithm?

They give all the same usage information and probably more than Windows 10 sends to Microsoft. If you don't thing Google is collecting insane amounts of data from Chromebooks, you're incredibly naive.

And if you are signed into Google (from any browser) they collect your information. Or if you use Gmail.

It's what they use for many of their services. I guess the question I'm asking is more philosophical - if you 'opt in' to the Google ecosystem, why is this a bad thing?

Up to now, there's been no indication Google abuses your data (unless you consider algos to show you ads as 'abuse'), or that it ever leaves Google's servers, or is ever even human-readable...

> if you 'opt in' to the Google ecosystem, why is this a bad thing?

In the same way, you 'opt in' to the Microsoft ecosystem by using Windows. The problem is everyone seems to give Google a free pass because of free stuff. What's crazy to me is that whenever Google expands the amount of information they collect, they're praised for being so innovate. I mean, one of the "best" new features of the next version of Android literally walks the entire view hierarchy on your phone and sends it all too Google's servers, but god forbid Microsoft collects some usage information and crash reports.

No, people give Google a free pass because, even though they collect data, they haven't visibly abused that trust.

MS has (as shown in other articles). Their EULA states it. But then they claim they don't, and that Google are the bad guys.

The great thing about chromebooks is less forced obsolescence, so fewer hw upgrades required.

If the only thing you ever use is a web browser, then you could use a years old iPad just fine. For students, keyboard is probably the biggest factor and for schools it is the price.

I'm just amazed that in 2015 we can run videos on every possible platform, same for viewing pdf documents, and even web-based applications.

But when it comes to simple "natively-integrated" applications, there is a clear divide in platforms.

Well, one thing to consider is that "natively-integrated" applications are slowly losing ground to cloud-based applications. Look at the apps for Chrome - they run on Chromebooks, Mac, Windows, and Linux.

It's amazing how different different communities can be. I have never seen a chromebook in the wild that wasn't gifted by Google.

Guess I live more sheltered than I thought!

> It's amazing how different different communities can be. I have never seen a chromebook in the wild that wasn't gifted by Google.

Sure you have, it's just they're barely noticable. Little black laptops with a web-browser open. Not all of them have big chrome logos on them.

I picked one up and de-chromed it, upgraded the m2 sata, and installed ubuntu. Makes a decent and cheap dev machine.

My family owns three. I'm the only holdout (not a good platform for development or gaming). They are light and handle web pages fairly well, which is all most users seem to require.

Once Microsoft's new Edge browser matures I could see a free, locked down version of Windows 10 being some serious competition for Chromebooks and iPads.

I was going to say "Wouldn't it be too resource heavy?" - meaning the whole Windows baggage as opposed to the leaner ChromeOS.

But then I considered that the resource usage of Chrome (or Edge for that matter) itself might be the single biggest factor.

Windows RT was supposed to be the "lean locked down Windows" experience for mobile devices - and it sucked performance wise on "tablet hardware" (which is what most cheap Chromebooks have anyway, whether it's ARM or Atom...sorry, I mean "New Celerons™").

Windows is pretty good even on minimal resources these days. Microsoft could cut a lot of legacy stuff out though for a Chromebook-like experience.

I love the idea of a Chromebook. A somewhat limited laptop that looks after itself in terms of updates. My big issue with Chromebooks are that they are limited to only running Chrome web apps unless you root it but then you turn it into a "normal" laptop.

Once the Windows app eco-system improves I could see a WindowsRT like version doing well. Strip out all the Win32 stuff all apps come in via the Windows Store with the option to side load by an administrator if needed. With Edge for web, Groove Music and Film & TV for music and video you have a pretty nice out of the box solution. Through in a few core apps like a modern Notepad, File Explorer, etc. and you have a great little Chromebook competitor.

Also they have pretty good modern/universal core Office apps now. They need Office 365 to edit which is a pain but with the school has an Office 365 deal that isn't an issue either.

They've got a version of Windows 10 that runs reasonably well on the Raspberry PI 2 and I imagine most chromebook like devices have better specs that the RPi2.

Not exactly, it's Windows IoT which doesn't really have a GUI. I agree with the original comment, MS might follow suit with Edge.

Sure, but Windows IoT should be plenty good enough for Microsoft to build a ChromeOS clone on top of it.

And it wouldn't even be the first time. Microsoft had "Windows Embedded" (Vista and XP) which did exactly that. Essentially a kiosk operating system often used either for VB6 applications or for a web browser.

Off topic (educational computers) but I have mixed feelings about Chromebooks. It seems like you give up a lot of privacy (potentially) but they are very secure. The security is great for kids in school, but are advertising profiles now being created for people when they are in K-12? (I love my Toshiba Chromebook 2, so I hope I don't sound too critical of the platform.)

Wouldn't they be using Google Apps for Education (I don't know)? If so, the terms of that say that data covered by Apps will not be mined for ads:

Google Apps for Education services don't collect or use student data for advertising purposes or create ads profiles.

https://support.google.com/a/answer/139019?hl=en

They're still collecting the user data. And they're building a familiarity and user reliance on cloud "apps".

Thanks, that is good to know. I wondered if google would have special terms for school kids.

From oversize iPods to glorified browser notebooks.

I have a full installation of Ubuntu running on my glorified browser notebook and it can be used as a normal laptop. It performance can be a little slow when working with very large data sets but on the other hand it was just about $300 including tax so it was an enormously good deal.

I love it.

No Linux distributive is mentioned in that article. I have no doubt that a combination of RAM, SSD and CPU can achieve great things with right software.

Yep! And believe it or not, you can do a ton in the browser. Aside from heavy duty programmers and creatives, most people can do everything they need to in the browser. Pretty exciting, isn't it?

You can do everything you need with a Pentium 90 PC running Windows 95. That doesn't make it exciting.

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