I continue to maintain that Chromebooks are toys. Any real productivity is just not possible with them. I would rather an older Lenovo ThinkPad T4XX series that I bought off of Amazon than a brand new Chromebook.
I’m telling you, the average person nowadays (if they even use a desktop/laptop computer at all!) just uses the browser and basically nothing else ever. Maybe an office suite. Chromebooks are perfect for them.
Probably schools, those bad boys are pretty much designed to be used in schools. They are easy for the sysadmin to manage and they are easy to use for the student. They charge fast and stay charged for a long time, and most things a student would need can be found online. They also make it harder for a student to brick their own computer or do things they shouldn’t. Even if they are horribly Google-ridden, they do work well in schools.
As a former K-12 sysadmin who maintained 10,000 chromebooks on my own I think that either of you doesn’t fully grasp how crucial these devices are. Web access is 99% of school device usage and for the few random CTE/STEM products or PASCO devices for science I’ll get a dedicated laptop locker with 10 laptops in it for checkout that run Windows with a base golden image and (preferably entune, but let’s be real) apps in SCCM Software Center so I can quickly wipe them when inevitably a student with more free time than myself either breaks it, deletes system32, or loads it full of porn or Counter Strike.
It’s for students. It’s cheap, it’s effective, it has minimal vulnerabilities that cannot be quickly resolved in 1 minute with a power wash. It has an easy admin interface for techs so I can have them manage smaller details, and it allows me to quickly get them repaired, or cheaply replace them.
Chromebooks are nearly perfect student devices, especially newer ones.
They charge quickly, have long battery lives, and most things students would need are easily accessible on Chrome. As well, it’s a little bit harder for students to exploit and put their own apps on in my experience, because it requires more knowledge than what most students have to counter things like social media blocks (Games are kinda an exception though).
While they probably aren’t the best for other forms of usage, they are very good school devices. I wouldn’t even consider using Macs or Windows laptops at schools instead.
Back in 2013 when the first Chromebooks were rolling out to education they basically subsidized the hell out of them. Google Admin and the licenses came free for the first like 1k or so devices if I recall. It allowed small districts to get them even cheaper and lessened the costs for us larger districts as well. It made it impossible to deny over a comparable windows device that would have easily cost 3x as much and more importantly it required 1/100th the work to setup and maintain. Plus GADS included a whole suite of apps that still had a cost on the windows side since O365 was still in its infancy and MS wasn’t sure how to charge for it.
I stopped trying to do Linux on the Chromebook after the third time this happened to me. Lust SSHed to another machine and tried Termux, then gave up and went to a regular laptop.
Yeah I’ve used ChromeOS on computers with decent specs and it’s not bad. I don’t like using it now because I care about privacy a lot more but when I did it was nice.
The same Lenovo that couldn’t keep their internal web pages from being public accessible that then allowed the shimming of every other manufacturer’s Chromebooks? Fuck Lenovo.
Yeah, you could be right about that. When their brand reputation takes too much of a hit they have to recover by improving the quality for a period of time and accepting less profit.
I continue to maintain that Chromebooks are toys. Any real productivity is just not possible with them. I would rather an older Lenovo ThinkPad T4XX series that I bought off of Amazon than a brand new Chromebook.
Eh? They’re fine, especially now that they can run Android apps.
At least, for the kind of person who does 99% of their computing in a browser. Which nowadays is actually quite a huge percentage…
Not for me, but I don’t hate them at all. For what they do they are quick and reliable. I’m just not the intended consumer
I am struggling to figure out who the intended consumer is in the first place. 🤣
I’m telling you, the average person nowadays (if they even use a desktop/laptop computer at all!) just uses the browser and basically nothing else ever. Maybe an office suite. Chromebooks are perfect for them.
Yes, I know. I was being facetious. I cannot help but hate all things Google.
Yeah it would be cool if we could have a Firefox version.
RIP Firefox version.
Probably schools, those bad boys are pretty much designed to be used in schools. They are easy for the sysadmin to manage and they are easy to use for the student. They charge fast and stay charged for a long time, and most things a student would need can be found online. They also make it harder for a student to brick their own computer or do things they shouldn’t. Even if they are horribly Google-ridden, they do work well in schools.
arcvm is completely screwing the android support on Chromebooks.
they should have nixed it when they realized that aarch64 support was impossible.
As a teacher who teaches students with Chromebooks, I concur.
As a former K-12 sysadmin who maintained 10,000 chromebooks on my own I think that either of you doesn’t fully grasp how crucial these devices are. Web access is 99% of school device usage and for the few random CTE/STEM products or PASCO devices for science I’ll get a dedicated laptop locker with 10 laptops in it for checkout that run Windows with a base golden image and (preferably entune, but let’s be real) apps in SCCM Software Center so I can quickly wipe them when inevitably a student with more free time than myself either breaks it, deletes system32, or loads it full of porn or Counter Strike.
It’s for students. It’s cheap, it’s effective, it has minimal vulnerabilities that cannot be quickly resolved in 1 minute with a power wash. It has an easy admin interface for techs so I can have them manage smaller details, and it allows me to quickly get them repaired, or cheaply replace them.
Chromebooks are nearly perfect student devices, especially newer ones.
They charge quickly, have long battery lives, and most things students would need are easily accessible on Chrome. As well, it’s a little bit harder for students to exploit and put their own apps on in my experience, because it requires more knowledge than what most students have to counter things like social media blocks (Games are kinda an exception though).
While they probably aren’t the best for other forms of usage, they are very good school devices. I wouldn’t even consider using Macs or Windows laptops at schools instead.
Back in 2013 when the first Chromebooks were rolling out to education they basically subsidized the hell out of them. Google Admin and the licenses came free for the first like 1k or so devices if I recall. It allowed small districts to get them even cheaper and lessened the costs for us larger districts as well. It made it impossible to deny over a comparable windows device that would have easily cost 3x as much and more importantly it required 1/100th the work to setup and maintain. Plus GADS included a whole suite of apps that still had a cost on the windows side since O365 was still in its infancy and MS wasn’t sure how to charge for it.
If the os would stop breaking my Linux install I might disagree with you.
I stopped trying to do Linux on the Chromebook after the third time this happened to me. Lust SSHed to another machine and tried Termux, then gave up and went to a regular laptop.
ive been using high performance Chromebooks as my main Dev laptop for more than a decade.
if you buy a toy then it’s a toy.
Yeah I’ve used ChromeOS on computers with decent specs and it’s not bad. I don’t like using it now because I care about privacy a lot more but when I did it was nice.
Just curious what sort of dev, and what kind of tools do you run on a Chromebook. Is it better than a standard laptop?
I do system level development for Linux, Android, and Windows.
I use rustc, clang, and MSVC depending on the target platform.
I can build iOS and macOS but testing is impossible without an iPhone or macOS device.
Lenovo is a Chinese government data gathering operation though.
The same Lenovo that couldn’t keep their internal web pages from being public accessible that then allowed the shimming of every other manufacturer’s Chromebooks? Fuck Lenovo.
Right now the build quality of Dell and HPs are worse. I should know. I have at least 4 fail per week.
And two years from now it’ll be Lenovos and HPs shitting the bed. Four years Dells and Lenovos. It’s all cyclic. Always has been.
Although to be honest, HP never built a good laptop.
Yeah, you could be right about that. When their brand reputation takes too much of a hit they have to recover by improving the quality for a period of time and accepting less profit.