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I think a major factor to its success was the Google backend making everything substantially simpler and cheaper. People have been putting linux on old hardwar

by nols 11y ago

I think a major factor to its success was the Google backend making everything substantially simpler and cheaper. People have been putting linux on old hardware to give away for years, but Chromium letting students keep everything "in the cloud" means they can keep the computers secure at the school while students can still access all their files wherever using Google's easier to use infrastructure. It's certainly possible to create something like this using linux and not Google products, but it would be much more expensive and require higher level staffers and better trained users.

gravypod 11y ago
Well, why is that? You could have just installed chrome, locked down the OS and everything, and purchased google apps. It would have been the same thing, with more features. (You could install IDEs for programming classes)
- nols 11y ago
  Those are all things someone would have to do, or (more likely) used a management system to do it automatically, while this company does it for a $60 lifetime license. It simplifies things and thus makes it cheaper. It seems like this company originally did what you're suggesting with a server and thin clients, but transitioned to Chromium because that's what the schools want.
- rtkwe 11y ago
  > Dan Davenport, the director of technology for the area schools, had looked into using Chromium, the open-source version of Google’s Chrome operating system, but was stymied by the complexity of supporting a range of different drivers on a mishmash of old computers. This seems to be one of the major reasons for going for the product offered by Neverware. Going with Chromium through them they got a working setup with limited configuration and support should anything not work. School IT works on a shoe string budget at the best of times and much less in poor districts so the time costs of figuring out how to install and configure the laptops they had isn't trivial. Then they have to be able to support them and setup processes to restore them easily.
  - gravypod 11y ago
    I guess your and nols response do make sense from a operations perspective.

by nols 11y ago

gravypod 11y ago

Well, why is that? You could have just installed chrome, locked down the OS and everything, and purchased google apps. It would have been the same thing, with more features. (You could install IDEs for programming classes)

nols 11y ago
Those are all things someone would have to do, or (more likely) used a management system to do it automatically, while this company does it for a $60 lifetime license. It simplifies things and thus makes it cheaper. It seems like this company originally did what you're suggesting with a server and thin clients, but transitioned to Chromium because that's what the schools want.
rtkwe 11y ago
> Dan Davenport, the director of technology for the area schools, had looked into using Chromium, the open-source version of Google’s Chrome operating system, but was stymied by the complexity of supporting a range of different drivers on a mishmash of old computers. This seems to be one of the major reasons for going for the product offered by Neverware. Going with Chromium through them they got a working setup with limited configuration and support should anything not work. School IT works on a shoe string budget at the best of times and much less in poor districts so the time costs of figuring out how to install and configure the laptops they had isn't trivial. Then they have to be able to support them and setup processes to restore them easily.
- gravypod 11y ago
  I guess your and nols response do make sense from a operations perspective.