reasonably fair assessment, but the problem with Chromebooks is that they're basically glorified smartphones as opposed to desktop PCs, in that they're consumpt

reasonably fair assessment, but the problem with Chromebooks is that they're basically glorified smartphones as opposed to desktop PCs, in that they're consumption devices as opposed to creative devices. sure you can get various chrome extensions (presumably not on these school Chromebooks though) that let you get part of the way there—I passed my first semester of CS using only a Chromebook with the Secure Shell extension to remote into my linux box at home—but by and large the era of everyone having the untapped creative power of a cheap commercial desktop PC in their home is kind of over now, and in my opinion we largely squandered that wonderful time by not encouraging more young people to play around with them creatively.