4 ms·

A Chromebook is a pretty impressive piece of hardware for $99.

by marccuban 13y ago

harrytuttle 13y ago
Piece of hardware yes. Terminal yes. Computer: no.
- axylone 13y ago
  I'm typing this in chromium on ubuntu/xfce, alongside an Eclipse window open working on some Go code, inside of a crouton chroot, on a $250 Samsung Chromebook that has better battery life than any of my previous laptops. I disagree.
  - harrytuttle 13y ago
    In context to education do you really think they're going to use anything other than the OOB configuration? Oh and the Lenovo T400 I bought last week (Core 2, 2.4, 8Gb RAM, Radeon HD, 128Gb Samsung 840 pro) lasts 8 hours only cost $25 more and doesn't break if you cough near it. I don't get the value proposition.
    - freehunter 13y ago
      Where can you get a bunch of outdated Thinkpads with custom hardware installed (in my experience, the T400 released four years ago doesn't come with a 128GB Samsung SSD) for that price? How would a school district go about buying a thousand of these off-market, custom-modified laptops?
      - harrytuttle 13y ago
        UK IT brokers have hundreds of them if not thousands floating around. Mine wasn't even used. SSD costs more than the unit. It doesn't take a genius to source that quantity. HOwever, the school district should buy a pile of shit dell desktops and bolt them to the desks like they probably did before rather than succumb to a low priced promotional Trojan. Someone probably gets a promotion for saving the cash but do they realise how inflexible the machine is and how tied onto the vendors' platform it is. Selling out is the only description.
        freehunter 13y ago
        It's also a machine the kids can't screw up and takes next to no IT resources to administer. Unlike a shit Dell bolted to a desk.
- Selfcommit 13y ago
  I'm a system admin for a large school district. My daily device for day to day work is a pixel. Before that I functioned just fine on a Samsung chromebook ($199) for 6 months. I can assure you, Chromebooks are most definitely a computers. (They cover far more than the needs of the average user)
  - harrytuttle 13y ago
    Do you use ChromeOS or have you installed something else? If it is a ChromeOS device, I don't believe you. You cannot be an effective sysadmin administrator on a ChromeOS machine unless you're propping up Google Apps and nothing else. If you have installed something else, the value proposition of a pixel is flawed and your education district shouldn't have paid for it.
    - mbreese 13y ago
      You can get an SSH terminal on ChromeOS (either dev-mode or via a Chrome app). You can also get a remote desktop client. That's all you need for the vast majority of system administration tasks. Typically you use your primary desktop to connect to a server to do any other tasks. And, I would think that for most school work, having a computer that the kids can't break would be an admin's dream. So, the ChromeOS notebook should work as good as anything for that job.
      - harrytuttle 13y ago
        What happens when you have no network connection? About 50% of my administrative tasks (documentation and architecture) are entirely offline tasks? My kids can't break their windows machine, because I know what I'm doing and have set up a strong security policy.
        ori_b 13y ago
        > What happens when you have no network connection? I wait until the end of my commute, and then use the network there. All places I work form have internet access.

A Chromebook is a pretty impressive piece of hardware for $99.

harrytuttle 13y ago

Piece of hardware yes. Terminal yes. Computer: no.

axylone 13y ago
I'm typing this in chromium on ubuntu/xfce, alongside an Eclipse window open working on some Go code, inside of a crouton chroot, on a $250 Samsung Chromebook that has better battery life than any of my previous laptops. I disagree.
- harrytuttle 13y ago
  In context to education do you really think they're going to use anything other than the OOB configuration? Oh and the Lenovo T400 I bought last week (Core 2, 2.4, 8Gb RAM, Radeon HD, 128Gb Samsung 840 pro) lasts 8 hours only cost $25 more and doesn't break if you cough near it. I don't get the value proposition.
  - freehunter 13y ago
    Where can you get a bunch of outdated Thinkpads with custom hardware installed (in my experience, the T400 released four years ago doesn't come with a 128GB Samsung SSD) for that price? How would a school district go about buying a thousand of these off-market, custom-modified laptops?
    - harrytuttle 13y ago
      UK IT brokers have hundreds of them if not thousands floating around. Mine wasn't even used. SSD costs more than the unit. It doesn't take a genius to source that quantity. HOwever, the school district should buy a pile of shit dell desktops and bolt them to the desks like they probably did before rather than succumb to a low priced promotional Trojan. Someone probably gets a promotion for saving the cash but do they realise how inflexible the machine is and how tied onto the vendors' platform it is. Selling out is the only description.
      - freehunter 13y ago
        It's also a machine the kids can't screw up and takes next to no IT resources to administer. Unlike a shit Dell bolted to a desk.
Selfcommit 13y ago
I'm a system admin for a large school district. My daily device for day to day work is a pixel. Before that I functioned just fine on a Samsung chromebook ($199) for 6 months. I can assure you, Chromebooks are most definitely a computers. (They cover far more than the needs of the average user)
- harrytuttle 13y ago
  Do you use ChromeOS or have you installed something else? If it is a ChromeOS device, I don't believe you. You cannot be an effective sysadmin administrator on a ChromeOS machine unless you're propping up Google Apps and nothing else. If you have installed something else, the value proposition of a pixel is flawed and your education district shouldn't have paid for it.
  - mbreese 13y ago
    You can get an SSH terminal on ChromeOS (either dev-mode or via a Chrome app). You can also get a remote desktop client. That's all you need for the vast majority of system administration tasks. Typically you use your primary desktop to connect to a server to do any other tasks. And, I would think that for most school work, having a computer that the kids can't break would be an admin's dream. So, the ChromeOS notebook should work as good as anything for that job.
    - harrytuttle 13y ago
      What happens when you have no network connection? About 50% of my administrative tasks (documentation and architecture) are entirely offline tasks? My kids can't break their windows machine, because I know what I'm doing and have set up a strong security policy.
      - ori_b 13y ago
        > What happens when you have no network connection? I wait until the end of my commute, and then use the network there. All places I work form have internet access.