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Chromebooks winning in schools, Windows and Apple fight back
- was_boring 10y agoI'm not a kid in school, but a highly paid software engineer and I have gone with a Chromebook. It does what I do, surf the internet and for 10+ hours on a single charge. When I want to do some programming, I just ssh into my several-year-old Linux desktop and use tmux + vim. If ChromeOS opened up its Linux internals without using the crouton hack, it would destroy every other platform out there.
- danieldk 10y agoFor a little more, you can get a Windows laptop that runs Office, Adobe Suite and a full Ubuntu environment per Windows Subsystem for Linux. (I am a Mac user, but Windows + WSL would probably be my first choice after a Mac. Especially if Microsoft would stop spying on their users.)
- UnoriginalGuy 10y agoAnd 3 hours of battery life. There are Windows Laptops with good 10+ hour battery life (e.g. Thinkpads). But they aren't a "little more" they're $1K+. Chromebooks are around $250-400.
- pjmlp 10y agoMy netbook Eee PC manages 5h.
- JohnTHaller 10y agoYou haven't looked at Windows laptops in a long time. You can get a 15" 1080p laptop with 8gb of ram and a 256gb SSD that gets 10+ hours of battery life for just north of $500 now. Here's an example with all that plus a dedicated graphics card for $549: https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-E5-575G-53VG-15-6-Inch-Windows/dp/B01DT4A2R4 https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-E5-575G-53VG-15-6-Inch-Wi... Or without the dedicated graphics for $470: https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E16834315779 https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E16834315779
- VLM 10y agoIf its OK to play the "why not double the price" game then at $500 you're getting close to why not get a mac laptop for $1K?
- liareye 10y agobecause he wants to be productive, not "work" on twitter and facebook all day.
- danieldk 10y agoI am in the Mac camp (as mentioned upthread), but I think there is a serious risk here for Apple. That $550 Acer has the same amount of memory and an as large SSD as my new 2016 MacBook Pro that is Euro 1699 new. Plus a dedicated graphics card. Of course, the MacBook will have a better quality, but the price gaps between MacBooks and similarly spec'ed laptops are getting quite large. Currently, a Mac or not is not a question for me. I prefer macOS with such a wide margin over Windows and Linux (for the desktop) that I am willing to pay the premium. Moreover, macOS has many applications that I like and are not available on other platforms (OmniGraffle, OmniFocus, Alfred, Tweetbot, Pastebot, etc.). However, after trying WSL I for the first time had the feeling that Windows could become an alternative to consider.
- JohnTHaller 10y agoIt's a direct response to this incorrect claim: "There are Windows Laptops with good 10+ hour battery life (e.g. Thinkpads). But they aren't a "little more" they're $1K+" They aren't $1k+. They're literally a little more than the $400 Chromebook.
- jdietrich 10y agoYou can buy a perfectly usable Chromebook for $170. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019G7VPTC/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019G7VPTC/
- JohnTHaller 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jcastro 10y agoDepends on the use case, chromebook for battery life and speed of updates is nice.
- was_boring 10y agoYes, you can, but my question would be why would you want to? I don't know anyone personally who uses Office or Adobe for anything but work. Even then, the vast majority of professional use of Office is handled perfectly well by their online offering or Google's Docs. Image manipulation and video editing are the only reasons I can think of someone would want something other than the hardware of a Chromebook. If Google opened up the Linux internals or made it dead simple to dual boot they would have a perfectly good development environment for web developers as well.
- danieldk 10y agoEven then, the vast majority of professional use of Office is handled perfectly well by their online offering or Google's Docs. In a lot of professional environments it is not. First of all, many employers do not like uploading documents into a cloud. Secondly, in an organization that uses Microsoft Office (which is probably still the vast majority of organizations), it is often not a replacement. A lot of Office files (especially with macros, etc.) do not work properly. Colleagues expect you return a document with updates with Office's 'track changes' functionality ("here, you have a Google Docs link with my changes to your Word document" will not fly). I think Microsoft still has a large advantage in big organizations, due to their traditional dominance. And Office 365/Exchange has added collaboration features as well (that work with Office on Mac and Windows).
- bspn 10y ago> I think Microsoft still has a large advantage in big organizations, due to their traditional dominance I agree, and in fact would extend it to dominance in entire industries where compatibility is key. I can imagine if a lawyer returned a 100 page M&A agreement via Google Docs they would be laughed out of the room and told to try again. Or an accountant sharing a company's entire set of financial statements in Google Sheets rather than Excel - same result. Cloud collaboration offerings are fantastic tools in my opinion, particularly for lightweight idea sharing. I know Google has grand plans for its productivity suite, but I think it will be an uphill battle to de-throne Microsoft anytime soon due to its widespread acceptance in a lot of industries as the "standard".
- tdicola 10y agoYou also get worse battery life, constant updates at the most inopportune times (that you can't even control anymore), advertisements in your OS, and very sketchy security/privacy.
- JCharante 10y ago> a full Ubuntu environment per Windows Subsystem for Linux The Windows Subsystem for Linux was so much slower than just running Ubuntu the last time I tries, the only reason I have for booting into windows is to update the skill queues for my eve characters once every few months.
- bluedino 10y agoSsh'ing into Linux servers and using vim doesn't do much for school kids.
- was_boring 10y agoWhich is why I say they should open the platform up.
- tedmiston 10y agoAre you using the Pixel or another Chromebook?
- was_boring 10y agoI use Dell Chromebook 13. I got it for about ~350 USD.
- AnOscelot 10y agoIf you're running a Chromebook with Android support, you have the option of Termux for a local Linux shell without needing Crouton or developer mode.
- bluedino 10y agoBack in the 80's we had computer labs full of Apple II's, which were used for educational (for the most part) games like Number Munchers, Carmen San Diego, and Oregon Trail. Then maybe some Print Shop, teaching typing, and using the computers to write reports for other classes. They did the job perfectly well - why aren't today's computers being used for the same things? You don't even need books. Class, take out your device and open Wikipedia to the article on volcanoes...
- mavhc 10y agoWhat makes you think they're not? Also audio and video editing, art, a lot of researching topics to write essays, working together building models in minecraft to learn about volcanos. And I consider the school all that happens in to be not that advanced in their usage.
- open-source-ux 10y agoThis is an unpopular opinion here, but I'll voice it anyway. There are serious privacy implications of using Chromebooks, particularly in schools where young students may not understand the degree and extent of online tracking going on in ChromeOS. Since you cannot use a Chromebook fully without signing in, everything you do in the operating system is tracked and recorded by Google and tied to your identity. Why is this even considered remotely acceptable? The amount of data that Google captures about students must simply be staggering. It's simply not enough to say that the data is "anonymised" (a meaningless term when you have so much data about a user's online habits), or only viewed in aggregated form. This still means the data can be interrogated and mined for information in ways we can't begin to imagine. It remains baffling why the tech industry is so silent on this important subject.
- pryelluw 10y agoI used to work in edtech and had to undergo COPPA audits every year. I asked some Google classroom engineers about those audits last year at ISTE and none knew about it. Found that really strange. Dunno if they are certified now.
- UnoriginalGuy 10y agoGoogle has a page about this here: https://edu.google.com/trust/ https://edu.google.com/trust/ People should read that and form their own opinion either way.
- danieldk 10y agoWhy would Google be a reliable source on whether Google does(n't) violate privacy laws and parents' privacy concerns? It has been shown in the past that they violated the 'Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act': https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/01/google-stops-scanning-student-emails-california-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/01/google-st... They were also tracking students once they used Google services that were not covered by Google Apps for Education (which is kind of hard to avoid, since you have to sign in on a Chromebook): https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/10/google-changes-its-tune-when-it-comes-tracking-students https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/10/google-changes-its-tun...
- jarvuschris 10y agoApple had an amazing product for schools and was dominating one-to-one laptop programs with their highly-repairable white plastic macbooks. And then they discontinued them to push iPads and the far-pricier macbook pros. Apple willingly jettisoned the school market to focus on consumers
- mcphage 10y ago> Apple willingly jettisoned the school market to focus on consumers Which is foolish; they have the resources to devote to both, but they don't know how to do more than 1 thing at a time. The lack of bulk iPad management tools until recently (and I don't even know how good they are now) makes them almost unusable in a lot of school situations.
- scott00 10y ago> Which is foolish; they have the resources to devote to both, but they don't know how to do more than 1 thing at a time. Lack of focus has a real cost, even to large companies. It's the difference between polished slick software, and a design-by-committee mess.
- mcphage 10y agoAbsolutely, and I have loved Apple's focus. But I think that as their product line has expanded, they've devoted the same amount of focus to more things, rather than increasing the "overall focus", if that even means anything. So they're doing more things, more poorly, instead of when they had a smaller list of things they were doing. And I don't think they can really get by these days doing fewer things; I think they're right that an integrated ecosystem is the right answer, but part of that is, ecosystems are large. So they do need to do the more things, but they just don't seem to be doing the more things that well.
- foolrush 10y agoExcept this plays into the mythmaking. Apple would very likely _love_ to have a second or third profit generator. If you examine the profits taken on iPads, MacBooks, and everything else Apple does (see http://www.asymco.com http://www.asymco.com) relative to the iPhone, it is a one trick pony. Hard to peel apart your "focus" when 85% of your business relies on it.
- infosample 10y ago"I think the iPad is still the best device, especially if you want to do real work ... While the Google apps are very powerful, you’re limited in what you can do in a web browser." Every platform has limitations. Windows and Mac seem to have the least. But does "real work" just mean whatever device you like best?
- cptskippy 10y ago> But does "real work" just mean whatever device you like best? I would say it's whatever device allows you to perform your job functions in the way that best suits your lifestyle.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y agoI am actually sad how schools are going to locked down, consumption based hardware. How many people here got their start in computers by messing with school computers to make them do new things? Now, the computer is just a "magic" locked black box to do homework on.
- amitp 10y agoFor me it was the other way around. The expensive school computer was locked down (this was the mid-1980s) but I learned stuff there that I then explored at home on a home computer. People tried to get into the school computer to capture other people's passwords, so it wasn't a "messing with school computers to make them do new things" as much as a "messing with school computers to prevent other kids from learning anything". I'm glad they were locked down. But I'm also glad my home computer was completely open (Commodore 64, TRS-80, IBM PC) and relatively simple to experiment with. Maybe a Raspberry Pi serves that purpose today but it's so much harder to spend the time to learn that when there's a shiny ipad next to it.
- thejosh 10y agoSchool computers were locked down for me since at least 1998.
- bradleyjg 10y agoI work in EdTech. I never thought the ipad ever made sense in the classroom and I'm not surprised that a netbook is beating back the tablet. Input onto a tablet is clumsy at best. It is essentially a passive device. Yes, you can add an aftermarket keyboard and and an after market stand, but now you have a three part hacked together netbook instead of one that's designed with a keyboard and hinge from the get-go. Further, tablets are a magnet for damage. A laptop screen can take localized damage and still mostly work. A tabket screen shatters. Plus the laptop screen is set back within the monitor component and the overall center of gravity means that a netbook is more likely to land on the keyboard side. Finally, the software story is best for windows (web and native plus great management features), decent for chromebook, and worst for ipads.
- bluedino 10y agoThe big deal with iPads ate my local district was "interactive textbooks". All the books we got never lived up to the hype.
- platz 10y agodeign to threaten the textbook status quo.. established players do not find value in "disrupting" themselves.
- ghaff 10y agoI'm sure that's true. However, I'd observe that interactive multimedia books aren't something that have become a big thing outside of schools either. People obviously consume multimedia but there doesn't seem to be a huge appetite for packaging them up as books in any systematic way.
- rhizome 10y agoInteractive textbooks have been pushed by the largest established publishers (Thomson, etc.). This goes back to CD-ROM days.
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- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoApple seem to be in the same state of denial now that Microsoft were when Windows 8 came out. They believe touch-screen tablets are the future, and the way computing should be done, and ignore the desktop and laptop paradigm works much better for getting work done for a lot of people. Microsoft realised their mistake and came out with Windows 10, which works well across both tablets and desktops/laptops. Apple seem to have doubled-down. The future looks prettier for the former.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y agoThere's just no real replacement for a keyboard and mouse. And if I'm using those, why wouldn't I want a laptop?
- cptskippy 10y agoThe opposite is also true. Keyboards and mice are no replacement for a touch screen. I have a laptop with all three and I love it.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 10y agoThe tie-breaker is this—would you rather have a 'laptop' with no keyboard or mouse but a touchscreen or the other way round.
- cptskippy 10y agoThere's no tie to break. They're different overlapping forms of input. They co-sign just fine on a laptop and you don't have to choose one over the other.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 10y agoThere's a tie to break because the discussion was about iPads, which offer a touchscreen but not a KB or Mouse.
- Theodores 10y agoIs there any evidence of kids with iPads getting better results than kids with Chromebooks? I do not see any mention of this metric.
- discordance 10y agoTo extend on that, is there any evidence that more technology provides better education results?
- Shorel 10y agoEven Socrates knew books are detrimental to our memorization abilities.
- Tempest1981 10y agoTo some kids (more often boys for whatever reason), they can be a major distraction. So easy and tempting to get distracted.
- mavhc 10y agoThere's never any good evidence on education techniques, because it would take 40 years to see if they'd worked, assuming they were randomized and followed up
- tootie 10y agoI have 2 iPads that I inherited. They are used 99% for watching videos. Expensive portable streaming TVs. My daughter practices typing and coding on her Chromebook. Paid $180 >2 years ago and it works perfectly.
- pryelluw 10y agoHave you installed crouton? Check it out if not. Allows you to run a linux distro on a browser tab. Super useful.
- Niten 10y agoIt also defeats the very purpose of a Chromebook, which is practically bulletproof, worry-free security. If you really need a full-fledged Unix system (as I do), IMO it's best to run that on dedicated hardware and SSH in from a secure Chromebook. But I'm not sure what a student like the parent's daughter would gain from putting their Chromebook into developer mode, aside from a newfound susceptibility to malware.
- eweise 10y agoChromebooks plus google classroom are all I see in my kids elementary school. Reminds me of the early days of Apple. Kind of funny that you can get a $200 chromebook and it has a touch screen. My $2,500 macbook pro only has a touchbar.
- foepys 10y agoWhy would you want a touch screen on your Macbook? Touching the display will leave grease stains on the glossy display, you will move the angle of the display, and you have to raise and extend your whole arm instead of just moving your hand. It doesn't make sense to have a touch screen on a Macbook because the form factor is totally different from tablets.
- eweise 10y agoI dunno. I guess my kids find it natural to touch things they see on the screen and they expect the screen to work this way. Different generation I guess. I personally like it because the trackpads on cheap chromebooks aren't as sensitive as the screen so some things like scrolling are easier by screen touching.
- bahmboo 10y agoPeople don't seem to have a problem touching the screen on their phone why is touching a laptop screen any different? I suggest you try out a touchscreen laptop for an extended period if you haven't already.
- analog31 10y agoMy kids are both in high school right now. My observation is that they are largely platform agnostic. Of course the browser runs on any platform. That's their "terminal" for everything. They use Google Docs on whatever computer they're sitting at, and have figured out its collaborative features. Just a few years ago it was very important for them to have a computer with the latest version of Office installed on it -- one for every kid in case they both got assignments at the same time -- but the teachers are now largely comfortable with Google Docs or Whatever. That 3-user Office 2010 license is probably my last commercial software purchase ever. So it seems that the choice of platform is something that the grown ups worry about, but it doesn't affect the kids at all. Their school seems to have gone with Chromebooks.
- ourmandave 10y agoSame thing at my daughter's high school, where they just make sense. Low tech support, almost disposable hardware, instant software updates. But next year is college so the choices are Windows or Mac?
- analog31 10y agoThat's an interesting question. I'd like to know too. At a K-12 school, that has chosen a particular platform, there's an implicit commitment to support that platform from an IT standpoint. At a university, where it's "bring your own," you're more likely to run into situations where somebody's technology has only been tested on a handful of mainstream platforms and browsers, and if you don't have one of those, then your problems are your fault. You'd hate to get the call: "I need to finish an assignment by tonight at 11 PM, and the software only runs on Mac or Windows." With that said, there are low cost Windows computers that are almost throwaway, and quite robust. My carry-around computer is an Asus Windows notebook that I got for 100 bucks refurbished.
- smichel17 10y agoCheck if the college has preferred vendors. Mine will repair your dell, mac, or Lenovo ThinkPad for free (you still pay for new parts required) if you own one of those.
- edtechstrats 10y agoSo, some of this is about mode, input. But, a big factor in Chromebook adoption in schools has to do with the ease of enterprise deployment and management. Apple is far behind the curve here, and the amount of work to manage a school/class deployment (esp in the early days) was huge.
- pjmlp 10y agoIt should be noted this is an US phenomenon. Here in Europe Windows still reigns supreme. I am yet to see any Chromebook on sale besides a few discounters trying to get rid of them. Some of which already returned by customers, being sold with heavy discounts.
- ghaff 10y agoOutside of schools, I'm not sure it's all that different in the US. You can find Chromebooks in stores but they're pretty few and far between. (My impression is that Google was pushing them in retail for a time but may have ramped down those efforts.) And, in spite of the fact that I hardly know anyone who uses Windows as their primary machine--and they're almost certainly in the minority at events I attend--Windows marketshare is still dominant.
- CountSessine 10y agoThe article mentions poor wifi infrastructure, but I'm surprised (or not? This is TechCrunch?) they didn't mention privacy. At parent-teacher meetings, reps from my local school board have said that they can't use google apps because of privacy concerns, what with student data being stored on servers in the US. Is google addressing this? I'd love to see chromebooks used here but the privacy issue is real and if kids' personal or school data is being harvested on a US server, it's tough to advocate for them.
- mavhc 10y agoSchools in UK seem to have pretty good WiFi, the ones I work at have Cisco WLCs. https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056694?hl=en https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056694?hl=en for EU compliance stuff, they have all the answers you'd expect
- discreditable 10y agoWe have Cisco WLCs too … from 2009.
- dTal 10y agoThe really scary part, to me, is the way a Google account is now effectively mandatory for a large section of US children. Sure, it's a "school account", but that doesn't stop them from being data mined or advertised to. I do not think such practises should be normalised at an early age, or sanctioned in an official capacity.
- ricktdotorg 10y ago> that doesn't stop them from being data mined or advertised to you are misinformed. as per Google's G Suite for Education FAQs: > For all EDU domains, ads are turned off in G Suite for Education services and K–12 G Suite for Education users don't see ads when they use Google Search and are signed in to their G Suite for Education accounts. and > G Suite for Education services don't collect or use student data for advertising purposes or to create ad profiles. and > Like many email providers, we do scanning in Gmail to keep our customers secure and to improve their product experience. In Gmail for G Suite for Education, this includes virus and spam protection, spell check, relevant search results and features like Priority Inbox and auto-detection of calendar events. Scanning to provide product features is done on all incoming emails and is 100% automated. We do NOT scan G Suite for Education emails for advertising purposes. via https://support.google.com/a/answer/139019?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/139019?hl=en edited to include URL.
- dooglius 10y agohttps://www.eff.org/press/releases/google-deceptively-tracks-students-internet-browsing-eff-says-complaint-federal-trade https://www.eff.org/press/releases/google-deceptively-tracks...
- VLM 10y agoThe headline sounds incredibly ominous and spooky, the reality is Chrome sync isn't disabled domain wide by default so the paranoids are flipping out. Its likely disabling chrome sync is going to lead to a lot of annoying headaches, "how come my bookmarks don't sync anymore"
- 10y ago
- Pxtl 10y agoWhat I've heard from a school library: they have iPads and Chromebooks, and the kids all want the Chromebooks because keyboard. Now consider that the iPads cost twice as much.
- siosonel 10y agoI observed a similar pattern in my kids, who gave the impression that using laptops make someone look smarter or more capable (less limited) than someone who uses tablets or iPads. In other words, someone "graduates" from using tablets to using laptops. I had thought that the convenient form factor of lighter, less frills tablets would make them continually more appealing to kids or less technical adults regardless of where the device is used. But that does not seem to be the preferred case in a school setting, especially as a student gets older. I think it reflects a desire to be taken more seriously, and the appearance of the tools being used matters a lot, even if the same type or quality of work could be done using a Chromebook or iPad.
- cypherpunks01 10y agoI wouldn't be surprised to hear this is also the case for small businesses (excluding software devs). We provision all new employees at our small manufacturing company with Chromebooks.
- ilamont 10y agoMy kids' school system starts students on Google Docs in 3rd grade (running on OS X/macOS), and almost all of the other classes that require special applications use browser-based apps. We got my daughter a $300 Acer Chromebook when she reached 8th grade and one of the best things about it is I almost never have to provide technical support. The exception is setting up printing -- Google Cloud Print, printer companies, and wifi router manufacturers leave a lot to be desired when it comes to setting up wireless printing.
- tacomonstrous 10y agoEpson and HP now have direct access on ChromeOS for certain printers.
- whitefish 10y agoWho here is old enough to remember Larry Ellison's Network Computer? Chromebook is the realization of Larry Ellison's vision. Back in the mid 90's Larry Ellison said, "we need computers that do less, not more". He was widely ridiculed at that time. Now we know he was right.
- snom380 10y agoI don't think it's given that he's right or wrong. Apple has chosen a very different path (powerful devices with local apps) and they're also extremely successful. The real lesson, I think, is that most people don't want to _manage_ devices. They don't want to deal with backups, they don't want to manage disks, filesystems and drivers, and if you can take all of that away they'll be happy to store all their documents in your cloud.
- petilon 10y agoFor home and personal devices, Apple's approach is fine. But for business and education, central management is essential.
- ghaff 10y ago>But for business and education, central management is essential. For business, it depends. I think my company is fairly typical in that we offer fully managed systems but don't require that people go that route. (But you're more or less on your own for support if you choose to self-manage.)
- davidy123 10y agoLarry Ellison didn't invent this, terminals and "thin computing" have been around for a long time, it's just that browsers are now the best way to interface rich interfaces. The origins of VNC are an AT&T project where people would wear RFC tags, walk up to any workstation and have their session. This was long before Ellison was talking about Network Computers. There is also John Gage from Sun's motto, "the network is the computer."
- OliverJones 10y agoI volunteer in an after-school supplemental program for kiddos in public housing. Three years ago we scared up a grant to buy four iPads to help the kids do their homework. Then a local teacher intervened and said, no, no, no, get Chromebooks. We did. We got six for the same money. They're compatible with the local school IT systems. They reset themselves when somebody logs off, so we don't have to worry about what the kids install on them. THEY HAVE KEYBOARDS! Kids can use them to for written-word assignments without futzing around with the onscreen keyboards. They aren't quite as game-focused as the iPads. That means we get less squabbling over who gets to use them and for what. (I've taken to leaving my iPad at home because it's an attractive nuisance.) They're cheap enough that it's not the end of the world if one gets damaged. The chromebooks are a big win for us and the kids we serve.
- Fiahil 10y agoI hope you will find something equally good when Google decide to discontinue the OS.
- liareye 10y agoYou're totally right, it'd be just like your iPhone being covered in grease stains because you're touching the screen with your fingers all day. Disgusting! Germs! Monoculture!
- foepys 10y agoThe difference is that you passively wipe the phone screen inside your pockets or its sleeve. I have seen some very, very disgusting laptop screens.
- liareye 10y agomy iPhone has a sleeve?
- xor1 10y ago>The difference is that you passively wipe the phone screen inside your pockets or its sleeve This is some of the worst grasping at straws I've ever seen on HN. Just admit that you are wrong here, you're being completely ridiculous. Cleaning a laptop screen isn't a big deal, and in fact you should be regularly cleaning any Macbook Pro retina display if you care about it's longevity. Oils from the keyboard are regularly transferred to the screen every time you close your macbook, and MBP retina screens are susceptible to staining when the anti-reflective coating wears off.
- foepys 10y ago> Oils from the keyboard are regularly transferred to the screen every time you close your macbook This is false. If the keyboard continuously touches the screen, it will get damaged eventually. If this happens to your MBP all the time, you should think about handling your MBP differently and protect the lid from outside pressure. > and MBP retina screens are susceptible to staining when the anti-reflective coating wears off. So you should touch and clean it even more? Who is the ridiculous one here? Did you even use a touch screen laptop that does not fold in a 180° angle? I did and it sucks. It really, really sucks. Your arm gets tired after 30 minutes, the display will look like grease city in typical fluorescent office light, and due to the interface changes to make buttons clickable with your fingers, you lose like 50% of your screen space.
- therobotking 10y agoI work in a school where we have a bunch of iPads that get passed around from classroom to classroom. They are terrible. I wish they'd purchased Chromebooks instead but iPads are more impressive on a list of school features.
- pirocks 10y agoOne thing that surprises/concerns me about chromebooks is the lack of ethernet ports. Surely something so internet reliant can't be expected to use wifi only.
- kps 10y agoUSB-to-Ethernet adapters work — at least, ones with Linux kernel support. All you risk is ending up with the same twisty-little-maze-of-dongles-all-different as with Apple laptops. Disclaimer: I used to work on ChromeOS. Semi-claimer: we had Linksys ethernet adapters IIRC, but I'm sure many others work.
- elvirs 10y agoI had two chromebooks and I loved them. I could get done everything I need on daily basis except for printing. Printing is a bitch on chromebooks. I tried all Google cloud print, wifi print and all other things but printing was inconvenient so when my business picked up and I had to print shipping labels and packing slips I went ahead and purchased a Surface Book. Now the business grew and we have a separate warehouse with a windows pc there for printing purposes im stuck with this 1400 dollar Surface book, its great hardware but I hate Microsoft Software, honestly, I just dont think Microsoft is good with software. Other than their office suite everything else MS makes is subprime at best. I had to use the media player than comes preinstalled on windows 10 yesterday and once again I told mysel, MS software sucks. I cant wait for Google to work out the bugs in Android apps running on Chromebooks. Hoping to switch back to chromebook soon.
- forgot-my-pw 10y agoPrinting's gone better nowadays. My Chromebook is able to recognize the network printer.
- shmerl 10y agoWe need more proper Linux in schools, not ChromeOS.
- stcredzero 10y agoIs there a version of ChromeOS which is optimized for older people? Is there anything out there that can help with elderly parent IT?
- watersb 10y agoThis is a great question and should be an "Ask HN" feature.
- jsz0 10y agoI suspect Apple will release a low cost (iPad priced) ARM based MacBook soon. iPad sales just aren't good enough for it to continue being Apple's only mass market 'future of computing' device. There is clearly a big market for good low cost computers.
- mastazi 10y agoAs the article itself points out more than once, the situation described in the title is strictly related to the US. I have studied at several educational institutions in Europe, Indonesia and Australia, and I never had anything else than a Windows device (either laptop or desktop PC) (except in cases where the arrangement was BYOD). EDIT: spelling
- tluyben2 10y agoI got an Asus flip recently and to be honest, it is a delight. Cheap enough, Crouton, fast enough and just a nice thing. Battery life is now the biggest issue on any device, at least for me, and the only device that solves that is the openpandora (and pyra as well hopefully) so they are my main travel devices, but the Flip when I have the space and after that the x220 for normal days. Which brings me to; X220 is old but long battery life (15-17 hours with the 9 cell & ubuntu with i3) and I can bring a spare battery and besides gaming it is fast for most things I do besides neural nets, but that's all cloud anyway for me. What is more worrying is that they (I have got many of them from a company throwing them away) behave far better than my 2015 macbook pro; overall faster, overall better battery, overall less slowdowns (the coloured wheel of horror on mac).
- erikpukinskis 10y agoAn opinion I hear often expressed on HN is that JavaScript is a horrible abomination, and native apps are fundamentally superior. Could one of those folks explain why they think Chromebooks are succeeding so well, if the apps are vastly inferior?
- DanBC 10y agoBecause the people making the purchasing decisions in schools are not the teachers or the pupils using the machines?
- Corrado 10y agoWe looked at using Chromebooks (or really just browser based OSs) several years ago (7+) but couldn't do it because of one fact; the network infrastructure just wasn't good enough. However, next year we are going with Chromebooks and I'm not worried about the network at all. In the last several years our Internet access speed has increased 10 fold and we have a nice WiFi mesh that reaches every part of the campus. In the coming months|years we are going to be moving to Google Fiber and that will remove another road-block. Google is hitting all the right buttons and is where Apple once stood.
- squarefoot 10y agoI'm also interested but a bit worried of the hardware support of different operating systems. Do you have any model to suggest that won't complain if I wipe its OS to install Debian? Last time I checked compatibility varied from model to model: no wireless here, slow graphics there or no audio etc. I already have a netbook that gives me huge battery life and a i5 laptop which is fast enough for everything, but whose battery life stinks badly. A chromebook would be the right in between, but what about debianizing it?