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Comment by jp_nc | Hacker News Reader

If they would offer a reasonable replacement program, I bet they could make a strong case to EDU. The nice thing about Chromebooks is when a kid spills something on it, it's cheap to replace and to get back up and running. A tight EDU iCloud restore and reasonable replacement cost could definitely make this an attractive option for some school districts as this will last for a kid's entire school career.

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> The nice thing about Chromebooks is when a kid spills something on it, it's cheap to replace and to get back up and running.

Is this actually a problem though? For my kids you either pay for the insurance plan at the start of the year, or you're responsible for the full cost of replacement.

There are obviously exceptions made for qualified low-income households but otherwise I don't know why they school would particularly care what replacement cost is if it's passed onto the family.

There are schools where close to 100% of the kids are qualified low income.

And I'm guessing those schools have never had Apple products and never will.

It turns out "every school district in America" probably wasn't the target they were shooting for. And frankly even if they do have a cheap replacement plan, schools that are 100% low income aren't spending $500 per student on a laptop, they'll be buying the cheapest chromebooks they can find if they provide any takehome option at all.

Well, exactly. A lot of comments in this thread are 'these will take back the education market' when in reality it will just slightly extend it to a slightly lower income demographic than the upper middle class districts that use Apple now.

I think most people are talking about individuals purchasing them for college, not necessarily middle/high schools assigning them. Maybe they could get them cheaper in bulk.

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