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Comment by russellbeattie | Hacker News Reader

Do any of you have children at a school using Google Chromebooks and Google Drive? Calling Windows S a Chromebook competitor completely misses the point.

Chromebooks are instant on, and your profile/data is 100% cloud based. You can grab any Chromebook from the rack in the back of the classroom, open it up, log in and immediately get to work on your report or whatever.

I got an original Chromebook from Google I/O years ago based on an ancient ARM chip, and it's still perfectly usable for when my kid's friend comes over to do homework and they need an extra box.

Windows and Mac computers will never be that easy to setup, use or maintain. Chromebooks and the cloud system of apps that Google has made is pretty much a perfect combination of simple and cheap and good enough.

View on HN

Until you loose internet connectivity (happens from time to time), or go abroad and don't want to pay high fees for net access.

Or when Google decides that you broke some of their rules (frequently happens in AdSense) and blocks all of your accounts.

I think you're missing the point.

Children don't need to worry about breaking AdSense rules and getting their accounts blocked, especially if they have accounts dedicated for school.

Children also will have internet at school.

Exactly, these are single purpose laptops for education. And I do believe that google docs has an offline mode now. So they can work offline for a limited period (at least).

And how does this 1000 USD compete with 250 USD boxes?

The way it likely competes (which I'm not saying I agree with) is on supportability and productivity.

That is to say, I'm sure Microsoft has data that "shows" these will be cheaper to administrate and support than Chromebooks. Combine that with all the software you can install, or offline workflows, etc and Microsoft comes out on top (according to Microsoft).

It's how Microsoft has always done things. I'm not here saying it's right or wrong, I'm just trying to answer your question.

Actually, this is more like the opposite of how Microsoft has always done things. When they've entered markets, from OS to word processing to RDBMS to web browsers, they've consistently produced simpler, cheaper products. Then they've gradually improved them until they became credible competitors and often dominant choices.

With phones, tablets, and now cheap school laptops, their timing didn't allow that. Google has already succeeded with the classic Microsoft strategy, all the way down to commoditizing the hardware vendors. Microsoft is instead coming in as a semi-premium option, combined with inertia/safety as a brand trusted by enterprises. The same play is a bit more successful in cloud computing, but they're still losing to AWS who are nailing the classic Microsoft strategy. Assuming they continue to decline in their ability to rapid-follow in new technology platforms, I expect they'll look more and more like Oracle and IBM.

It doesn't. The $139 windows laptop Microsoft is coming out with later this year will.

This sound very interesting! Could you please provide some link to back up this claim?

Windows 10 S will run on other devices besides the Surface Laptop, most of which will cost closer to $250. The Surface is just the flagship device for it.

I just dont get why I would ever spent 1000 USD on a model that does less than the Surface for a similar price.

But we should worry about google building advertising profiles on children, as they have been doing.

Very true, I was thinking of Chromebooks purely from a utility standpoint, but if parts of Google's plan is to build profiles on children starting from when they're young, that is actually especially nefarious.

I'm worried most of all that Google will use some sort of sentiment analysis or other machine learning tool to classify kids based on academic ability and build a sort of "cognitive profile" on children as they age.

This is really disturbing. Pretty much the literal definition of "hook em wile they're young. I am starting to think we need a standard oil style breakup of google/amazon/fb.

I do not believe this statement to be true.

The privacy notice provided by Google for their G Suite for Education is available here: https://gsuite.google.com/terms/education_privacy.html

It clearly states "Google does not serve ads in the Core Services or use personal information collected in the Core Services for advertising purposes."

Is the evidence that indicates this is not true? Is this in relation to non-core services that school administrators may opt into?

They aren't using it for advertising purposes right now, but they can still collect and store the data on children thanks to outdated privacy laws. Once the child comes of age all of that information is fair game according to their own policy (once the child becomes an adult, if they continue to use their account or link it to a new Google account, they are automatically under Google's normal privacy policy which we all know allows them to harvest everything you do within their services).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/12/28...

And Microsoft won't?

I never said otherwise, just responding to a question about Google specifically.

https://www.wired.com/2015/12/google-collected-data-on-schoo...

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2016/02/goog...

There is no doubt they are building the profiles.

No matter what the privacy notice by Google says, you should absolutely discount it since Google has a history of steadily making privacy agreements looser over the years (and they are legally allowed to do so). In 2014 they amended their policies to join the Google and DoubleClick cookies for targeted advertising. In 2016 they started joining that with YouTube history for targeted advertising.

That's a very real concern. As a parent I think about things like that all the time. My son has a personal Chromebook and both my son and daughter use Google school accounts.

The alternative, in this case using a Microsoft Surface Laptop instead, should raise many of the same concerns. With the tight coupling of online services and single account sign-on options that Microsoft offers, similarly extensive advertising and usage profiles can be built.

Why do you worry about this? Do you believe targeted ads are more harmful to your child than non-targeted?

No, I'm not worried about targeted ads, per say.

I'm more worried about the future misuse of all the accumulated data from their access and version control logs for cloud-based documents, internet browsing behavior, multi-player gaming sessions, personal emails, and all of the other forms of trackable interactions that my kids (and the rest of us) generate with on a daily basis.

It doesn't keep me up at nights -- but the paranoid part of me thinks it should.

Can you define misuse better? I'm not asking to be cruel, I just genuinely don't understand why someone would find the kind of personal information collection that is happening already, to be upsetting.

I.e. I see targeted ads regularly, so I know that I am being tracked by google et al, but this does not upset me. Can you help me understand why this should upset me?

It's 2037. A substantial chunk of 20-year-old Google user data got into the wild via (sale / theft / government regulation / who knows? A lot can happen in two decades).

Some enterprising startup fed that data into a simple ML algorithm and correlated it against other publicly available data. Turns out, your search history as a kid partially predicts adult outcomes like salary, grades in college, chance of bankruptcy, chance of arrest, etc. That startup sells this info to Experian, who adjusts their credit scores accordingly.

I can see why this would be a problem, but I would say it could be solved by making it illegal to adjust credit score based off non-transactional financial data. But I understand the concern better now, thank you.

If ads were the only issue I'd be pretty happy and willing to give advertisers all my information.

Trouble is companies and law enforcement frequently abuse information, and even when they don't, they get hacked by other people who do.

I wouldn't be "happy" to give them all my info. I'd like to be able to share my screen with the person standing next to me, "look at this thing I've found", without worrying some advertiser is going to reveal any personal detail they'd like to infer about me through which advert they pop on my screen.

Especially if we're talking about children and young adults, where even "you watch that tv show?" can be a source for social discomfort.

It should be illegal to advertise to kids.

Why?

Advertising is often coercive, designed to manipulate people into buying things they don't need/overpaying for things. E.g. brand advertising is why people pay $150 for a $10-pair of jeans made in Vietnam. Children's brains aren't fully developed, which makes them uniquely susceptible to manipulation via advertising. At the same time, they have no conceivable need to learn about different products, because almost none are direct participants in the economy.

It's difficult to categorically ban advertising in a free society, but at least in the U.S. speech that does nothing more than propose a commercial transaction is subject to lower First Amendment protections, and the combination of harmful effects on children and the lack of any benefit probably get you over the First Amendment hump in that specific scenario.

Are you okay with a big company having a profile about your child's most intimate questions as they age?

Children don't grasp the potential consequences of companies maintaining registries of people searching for really personal things.

However once they leave that school they'll be using a different account.

You think Google is that stupid that can't track multiple accounts of the same person? Google's business is data collection and processing.

What sort of intimate questions do you mean?

I'm ok with google knowing my location every second, I'm ok with receiving targeted shopping ads about watches after I browse watches on Amazon. I block ads when I feel like it, it's no skin off my bones.

It's not like men in black suits accost me at bus stops and force fliers into my hands with targeted ads. It's in my mind, literally harmless.

EDIT: All of my comments in this thread are being downvoted, presumably because

1. People are assuming I support advertising, and advertising to children

2. People are angered by that and thus downvote me.

All I'm intending to do is clarify why readers don't like the concept of advertising, or advertising to children. Is this offense, to ask for a clarification?

I have no issues with your question and was happy to provide a response.

Not sure why the downvote brigade decided to drop by your comment.

I didn't know that there are special accounts, I assumed they are reusing their own.

If it is like a corporate accounts in other places then yes, no need to worry about blocking the account.

They don't use their personal accounts. Accounts are managed for students in much the same way as the would be for a business hosted with Google Apps - https://edu.google.com/

Unless they buy a Chromebook at home.

You understand you can log in with your student account, right?

Yep. While you're still a student. Or with your personal account.

Or without an account at all.

As a paperweight.

https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/1057090?hl=en

But your complaint is still valid in the larger sense that you don't want to allow Google to have any say in the matter.

What we need is for Google's school/office apps and their storage to become open-source commodities that are self-hosted. "Self-hosted" can then involve any balance of self/outsource you or your organization would like.

That's what standards are for. If all your storage is based on a shared standard, anyone can implement a replacement for a given unit of data. Unfortunately, standards are not cool these days, because they make vendor lock in difficult to achieve.

My child lost her firstname.lastname gmail/Google account for life for a one-time childish mistake. So, I guess you are mistaken.

And what was this one-time childish mistake that lead to losing the account?

I'm curious as well. There's little a child, let alone an adult, could that would result in a permaban.

See the story the other day, where someone discovered the hard way what happens if you registered your PayPal account before you turned 18.

The story, for anyone else wondering what was referred to: https://hackernoon.com/paypal-is-still-one-of-the-worst-onli...

Spammed AdSense with fraudulent clicks, and impersonated other apps in the Play Store.

She saw a chain email (i.e. forward this to 10 people!) and decided it would be fun to make up her own. Apparently it was successful enough to get somebody's attention.
Edit: To be clear, I would never blame them for wanting to stop a cascading explosion of emails. But I also wouldn't say it's impossible for a child to get an account banned.

Makes for a good story at least. Can't blame a kid for being curious on how stuff works.

And why is that a problem ? Does it violate Google's policies in any way ?

It's a problem because Google banned the account. Doesn't matter if it's unclear about policy violation given they're the ones making the decision and providing limited opportunities for recourse.

Yeah I understood that part. I was only wondering if there is an explicit policy about sending chain emails.

Sorry, should've made it clear that I was making a separate point - that it doesn't matter either way when someone else can make a decision and limit follow up. It's long been a frustration for many with Google services.

From the TOS at the time:
"5.4 You agree that you will not engage in any activity that interferes with or disrupts the Services (or the servers and networks which are connected to the Services)."

Looks pretty broad for me. I can't send email to friends inviting them to an even and asking them to invite their friends ?

You're asking rhetorical questions. Instead, just think it through and you'll get it. Chain letters can explode, if written in a certain way.

So Google actually reads the content of the email and can hold it against the person ?

What do you think?

Google is notoriously famous for their automated and permanent /kickban. It's literally the first law when using their products : "Don't trust them and never put important stuff in one single place".
It doesn't surprise me that your child could trigger accidentally one of those super ban. At least it's not that bad, they could have banned your account too.

Literally the first law?

Yeah?
I mean, I use Google products all the time. But I have multiple accounts ready to go, and everything important backed up offline, because I work in IT, and I've dealt with too many horror stories.
Google products work wonderfully until they don't, and the trigger to account loss may be a complete accident. And there is virtually no recourse when it does.
Their systems are not as foolproof as people seem to think. I've gotten other people's pictures in my photostream, and other people's appointments in my calendar. I'm sure it goes the other way, too, and that is something that 100% should be on your mind whenever you use their services.

I've never used a Chromebook so this is an honest question - do they not have any kind of local sync, so you can work on your stuff and then upload it back to the cloud next time you get online?

Only to the extent that the sites/apps themselves choose to do that.

You do have the option of installing Android apps, so there should usually be something.

There is local sync for Google Drive applications (Docs, Sheets, whatever the other ones are called). There is, albeit small, an internal SSD for Chromebooks. On the whole, it's up to the web app developers to handle that functionality.

There are also local apps. The app platform is a little like Electron or Node -- locally-installed JavaScript with extra APIs that aren't available on the open web. Examples:
Caret text editor: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/caret/fljalecfjcio...
Text text editor: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/text/mmfbcljfglbok...
You can save stuff on Google Drive, and then it'll sync when back online.
People often say that Chromebooks don't have apps and that they're just a web browser. They're wrong.

That kind of misses the point for school use. But yes, for personal use you're right

At schools, during exams internet connectivity is disabled on purpose. How Chromebooks work then?
EDIT: Why the down votes? My wife is a teacher and disabling internet access during any kind of a test (not to mention exam).

At schools that use Chromebooks, they take away the Chromebooks during exams -- unless the exam is being taken on the Chromebook, which is a thing that happens.

You take digital exams on computers without internet access? Where and how?

I'm guessing over the local network.

At schools in Poland. You can't have internet access so you won't look up answers on the internet. You have just computer in from of you. It's pretty standard way of doing any kind of grading.
Example would be for programming class or for office suite. You don't need internet to work in IDE or in Office.

As long as you log in before internet is disabled (don't show up late to class?), you'll be in your user account. The laptop screens don't become black once they lose internet connection.
Google Docs/Sheets/etc supports offline editing, and a quick Google shows there are IDE's that run on a chromebook with offline mode support.

yea... they're all pretty crap. Need linux to really bring it alive.

How does that make for a reliable exam? In the real world you use the internet all the time. The exam should be about your skills, and using information sources like the internet should be one of them. It's not like you can 'download' a perfect answer to a programming exam online, and if you can, then you deserve a medal because you'll be able to build applications faster than everyone else.

For mere facts, I could kind of agree, though it is important to learn certain things, like certain historical dates, which you could perfectly google quickly, but not having them in mind means you can't follow a live discussion on the topic. But in disciplines like math or physics, it's about understanding what you are doing. Googlying-copy-pasting without understanding the solution of an exercise defeats its purpose. And it's not because you can google-translate a piece of text that you can speak that language.
I am all for modernising education but I am kind of appalled by the culture of google-copy-paste that I have seen 20-something doing when they are confronted to a problem, instead of trying to understand it and having a "what would make sense?" approach.

It's the same way we've done exams for the last 100 or so years.

For job safety, if your job has answers online, you probably want to specialize to move out of that.

As a Ruby developer who has been running my own development business for 10 years and still has to look up how to use Ruby's CSV class every time I use it - I doubt that online answers are going to be what puts me out of business.

If you have your own business, I can see that.
But as I usually work for somebody else, the risk of being replaced is more present.

That policy decision can instantly be reversed and isn't a technical limitation of any kind.

The down votes are likely because you're stating a regional behavior as if it's the universal norm. My children use Chromebooks at school, and fwiw they are very happy and productive with them. They're extremely prolific across the school boards in my jurisdiction. This isn't necessarily true everywhere, though.

Do you really think you can't use a Chromebook in offline mode?

I don't know - gp wrote that the data is "100% cloud based" so I assumed they don't.

You can use many ChromeOS apps in offline mode. And if your ChromeOS laptop supports Android apps then all of the apps are available whether offline or online.

Or someone smashes your machine with a hammer, or there's a nuclear war...
All kinds of things can go wrong. I'm not really sure what your point is.

> Or... or...
The point, I guess, would be that losing internet connection for these reasons is not an issue.

Except they work fairly well offline if you choose to store some data offline or in pen drives. Also, latest ones run almost the whole play store which completely changes the game. They can work as better android tablets when offline.

You lose your entire google account for breaking adsense rules? I thought you just lost the ability to do adsense stuff.

Recently, yes, you only lose adsense access - at least in my recent experience.
Originally, you lost the email account.
I once lost an adsense account by doing absolutely nothing.
I was in a university where internet was slow and hard to get. After a semester, logged back into my adsense connected blogger account but was told the account was blocked and couldn't be retrieved.

or google gets tired of supporting whatever server those machines won't function without.

Yeah, my high school has them and your description is spot on. What I notice is that Google's chromebook ecosystem is dedicated towards sharing and collaborating which works well at schools.

Found the Google employee.
For many reasons, Hacker News is FILLED TO THE BRIM with Google employees. I know this because anytime an article comes on here about Google Cloud that thread is immediately taken over by employees (many of whom to their credit identity as such) talking about how much better GCP is than AWS.
Now GCP today is kind of cool, still somewhat away from AWS but they certainly could catch up for sure, especially as the world shifts to more AI stuff where Google is already beating AWS.
However I remember back in 2014 seeing comments about how much better GCP was than AWS. Let me just state that that was physical impossible back then. Laughable and again, physically impossible. It's so impossible I'm still mildly upset all these years later.
Sorry for the rant but did want to document that here. That being said my sister uses Google Adsense for work and she has no complaints :)

Just to let you know, that person is not and never was a Google employee according to their resume

Heh, thanks for checking me out. :-) So weird that someone uses their real name on the internet, right?

Hah just seeing this now. Sorry Mr. Russell!

> Windows and Mac computers will never be that easy to setup, use or maintain.
While half true, I think Microsoft could ship that if they wanted to. Moreover, only listing the things Chromebooks are great at is also missing the point: there are areas where Chromebooks suck and that is where Microsoft can compete.

> there are areas where Chromebooks suck and that is where Microsoft can compete.
Absolutely, but Windows 10 S cannot do any of them.
Windows 10 Home/Pro can, but we are talking about the S version which is more comparable functionality wise to a Chromebook. Particularly a Chromebook that can run Android apps.

What does the S stand for in this instance? Scuppered? Slow? Substandard?
Hopefully Speedy, Superior or Sublime.
Reminds me of the RT version - Reduced Throughput

> log in and immediately get to work on your report or whatever
office365\onedrive allows this. if your docs are simple, you can do it from your phone or tablet too.
you are correct that you get a "whole" experience with a chromebook which is nice.

After your AD Profile is downloaded to the laptop which can take several minutes, and often the profile will remain on the machine after you return it to the cart. Plus software/settings might vary from machine to machine even from the same laptop cart.
The thing about Chromebooks is that the state is always consistent and your settings follow you. That's much harder to attain with Windows laptops (not impossible mind you, there is software that will revert a Windows machine back to a set state, but that isn't common/standard).
O365 is a great package for organisations (e.g. Planner, Teams, OneNote Online, Lync, etc) but in that situation you're giving employees laptops to keep as their own. In schools you want the machines to be disposable, in that situation Chromebooks are special.
OneDrive is just a DropBox clone, it doesn't really solve many pain-points.

The whole Windows, AD, O365 etc. experience is a PITA. I know there are all sorts of technological legacy and legacy business reasons for that, but let's face it: in the current form, the Windows model can't compare to something integrated like a Chromebook. It's not about who is 'better' or technically more capable, it's about what works for users, and Windows isn't it. Most of the time it is just what 'happens to be there'. That seems to be forgotten quite often.
I do wonder when some form of revised windows will come along that does away with 16-bit/32-bit legacy stuff, removes all the ancient API's and just focuses on the here and now. Breaking hard is of course not really Microsoft's way, as they make far more money by keeping legacy and tradition around, touting 'business support'.

I would love to see that day. Maybe do away with most of the over engineered concepts as well.

Or, you could use Linux. Today.

That's what Metro was supposed to be - a complete reimagining of Windows in the modern era, with a legacy Desktop mode if you really wanted it. But it turned out the legacy desktop mode was the only part of it the market actually wanted.somehow I don't think think not including the legacy mode would have made it any more successful.

The market still wants Win32 because metro/uwp was crippled, limited. Or more precisely, apps built on the new platform were not powerful. Microsoft Edge which was built as a tech demonstrator still had to rely on private APIs.
Second reason: The only place to discover and install the new apps is on the store which has bad, awful, pitiful search to using google or even bing. I don't know why MS doesn't leverage Bing in the store.
Lastly, in my locale and surrounding countries, sharing EXES is still necessary because of internet speed and data limits.
Ms removed the Small text size download links in the store. And their TOS prohibits development of apps to download them.
To give a context of importance of UWP/Metro installation files downloadability:
A customer walks into my shop and buys a new Android phone. And after that asks me to fill up the phone with apps like dictionary, bible, WhatsApp, anti-virus, games... for a fee.
The same happens with Windows desktop portion. But this isn't feasible with the new apps - internet cost and download time.
And it was one chief reason why Windows Phone didn't take off - at least in my country.
A friend return a chrome book last year simply because he couldn't just copy apps from others (like on windows).

All perfectly true. MS did revamp Windows from the ground up and blew it badly.

it can all be done through the browser. or on a phone\tablet.
onedrive is a dropbox clone with office integration that makes it really easy to save your documents.

I was thinking it would be interesting if you could get ChromeOS for these new laptops :-)

I suppose. But Google already tried the $1K Chromebook with the Pixel line, it didn't do too well against the $250-400 competition.

The Pixel line was impressive apart from the abysmal onboard storage. I would have considered one for a Linux laptop but the less-than-desktop-functionality OS (thereby reducing your expensive device to a glorified web browser) paired with the joke storage meant it was never going to get far?

I thought the Pixel line was more meant for internal consumption and as a tech demonstration for the capabilities of Chrome OS rather than as serious effort by Google to create a high volume mass consumption product.

Cloudready provides chromiumOS for 'normal' laptops (well, supported ones anyway)

Terry Myerson demonstrates a PC management app which streamlines setup at around 24 min into the video at http://event.microsoft.com/MayEvent/. The demonstrations look promising.

HS student (15) here. Occasionally use chromebooks when we have time in class to work on the assignment.

What is the overall sentiment like for them?
I recently interacted with a high school kid that was given a school-provided chromebook that had the most inane website filters following him around, the USB ports literally disabled, and tons of hoops to jump through to accomplish simple tasks.
For such a locked down platform, you really would think they wouldn't have to pull this shit.

Sentiment is slightly negative. Chrome OS is unpopular among techies for not doing things "real" computers can do. Login used to be very sluggish (it goes through a district SSO page, not normal google login), maybe it is better now? Don't think I've heard anyone say good things about them, but not a lot of complaints either.
The web filter is minimal (porn, pretty much), but that's just the district wifi (opendns), not the chromebooks themselves.

I am curious if Chromebook for schools completely block access to development mode? I have found out that with that mode enabled and Crouton I could develope Java applications offline using Eclipse and testing things using local webserver.

I believe they use this: https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/business/devices/featu...

I believe blocking it is an option. Can't do developer mode if you're enrolled and they can force enrollment on a device so if you try to wipe it and access developer mode it refuses and forces you back to enrollment.

Simple, cheap and very very secure. I recently bought a Samsung Chromebook Pro. I don't use my Macbook for anything anymore except for coding.

Also, the price. Sure there are cheaper variants announced but they won't start up as fast. I don't think MS has played this one well at all.

> Chromebooks are instant on, and your profile/data is 100% cloud based. You can grab any Chromebook from the rack in the back of the classroom, open it up, log in and immediately get to work on your report or whatever.
First of of all that's not entirely true. Nothing is instant. It wakes up fast, but not instantly. Login is fast, but not instant. First time login is fastish but not fast or instant.
Windows has had Roaming User Profiles since NT, Google calling the feature "cloud based" is just another way of saying remote. Since Windows 8 you could have a Microsoft Account which was a "cloud based" user profile and use Sky/One Drive which is a "cloud based" data repository.
My guess is you didn't watch the webcast? They made special mention of the fact that with Windows 10 S they had improved the login and first login times to be much faster than your typical Windows experience.
> I got an original Chromebook from Google I/O years ago based on an ancient ARM chip, and it's still perfectly usable for when my kid's friend comes over to do homework and they need an extra box.
That was what they advertised here. In Windows 10 prior to this announcement you could grant any other Microsoft Account access to login to your machine and it would download their profile and provide them access to their One Drive. The experience isn't as fast as on a Chromebook but it's less than a minute. The emphasis in this announcement was that with Windows 10 S they got it down to under 20 seconds which is Chromebook speed.
> Windows and Mac computers will never be that easy to setup, use or maintain.
I would disagree. With what they announced today, Windows 10 S is pretty damn close.

isn't this just being pedantic? for most people "fast enough" equates to instant.
if you asked most people if anything was "instant", they'd say yes and point to a number of things that feel "instant" to them.
It doesn't feel useful to nit on use of the word instant by using a definition that differs from most people.

if the claim is that Chromebooks are instant and Windows is slow, and the counterclaim is that Windows 10 S is down to 20s which is "Chromebook speeds" because they're not actually instant, then it seems very useful to point out.
(I haven't used either)

> Windows has had Roaming User Profiles since NT
And Windows XP had a Tablet Edition long before Apple even dreamt about bringing something like the iPad to market.

Ah the joy of roaming profiles where a user has a giant file on his desktop, gets bored waiting for his laptop to sync on shutdown or his battery runs out, and then turns the machine off. What happens to the profile in this situation?
I say this because I have had numerous times this happened to a colleague that I had to fix - the desktop would break. Broken user profiles were a real pain.
Thankfully I don't do this anymore but the thought of roaming profiles and broken syncs brought back a harrowing memory.

I think Chromebook is great for when you have wifi, I don't have when traveling. For this, I am thinking on a Macbook Air and this Microsoft surface seems nice (a copycat but OK). I have a business app that needs Windows and I work on Mac.

Are they targeting HS or College students? The decmvice looks good for the latter.

Sharing laptops like bowling shoes and being forced to sync everything with cloud for privacy pillaging - outside of a grade school context, this is the apocalypse scenario to me.

My dad is a computer tech at a school district. They have something like 800 Chromebooks. He can't keep up with how quickly they break. Kids are very rough with them.

Is Google drive still free for only three years? Are you past three years yet, and, if so, what is the monthly cost per user / per Chromebook?

Google Drive is only free for three years? That's news to me. I'm quite certain I've been a user for 4+ years (since its release).
I don't own a Chromebook though. Maybe that would change things.

Unless it's different with Chromebooks, it's free up to 15 GB.

When you get a chromebook you can redeem an offer for 100gb free for 2 years. When your 2 years is up, files aren't deleted but you can't upload anything else until you're below the 15gb. Drive is always free up to 15gb.

Of course, these days the Google Drive storage limit is shared with GMail so you also can't receive emails until you're back below the 15GB limit.

To add to this, adding 100gb back to your account is (just) $2/month or $20/year.

Chromebooks are great for most people, I even used one in college, but I did "side load" Ubuntu with Crouton for programming.

I use a Chromebook and it is great, also for the price. I think MS will not succed with a 999$ semi laptop.

If i understand the laptop is more like a flagship Windows 10 S device. They said there are other devices plant for as little as 189$.

I use them at work for mobile users. Perfect for most uses out of the can, and can connect to VDI.

Who called it a Chromebook competitor?
They compare it to a Mac but I can't find anything about a chromebook.

Could I run Haskell in the Chromebook? I mean, the real Haskell compiled to the platform.

Yes if you're willing to mess with crouton.

How are privacy issues handled, especially for the schoolchildren?

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