Charles Schwab Goes with Chromebooks

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FrgMstr

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I found this very interesting as it shows what a profound change cloud computing and tremendously powerful processors can do for mobile. I have an aging laptop that I use when traveling and I am not sure why I would need anything more than a Chromebook now for my particular needs while abroad. Worth mentioning here is that Schwab has a very specific usage model for this devices.
 
Pretty cool, but I can only imagine that Apple (or any other OEM for that matter) is probably going to be like:

 
Oye Kyle!!!

What's your favorite type of coffee?
 
Chromebooks are definitely very viable if all you need is a web browser and that does cover a lot these days. I think the most interesting development in Chromebooks is the addition of Android devices which fills in a lot of gaps.
 
yeah i use to lug around an 3 year old heavy laptop, ended up getting a chrome book and never looked back.. sure it's basic but i realized all i ever used my laptop for was browsing the web or watching youtube videos/twitch streams.. hard to beat for a couple hundred dollars.
 
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Chromebooks have been my mobile go-to device for a few years now. I tried a tablet / iPad, but I still like the traditional form factor with keyboard. And the fact that Chromebooks are so inexpensive (especially used ones) makes them especially nice for travel.
 
This is somewhat of a tangent topic, but my main concern is, and has always been, the integrity of the data stored in the 'cloud'.
As with all things internet, the bigger the target, the higher the chance of being targeted for exploitation.
Whether it's a data breach, ransomware, or just a DDOS attack, imagine the impact those problems would have on your company if the entirety of your data was not stored on premises in your control.

With a company like Schwab, I'm wondering what the SEC has to say about this plan.

So even if you set aside any concerns on how Google might exploit data collection for their purposes, there are still a lot of issues that would have to be addressed before I'd be comfortable with Schwab's usage model for Chromebooks.
 
wife school went with chromebooks...total pieces of shit. very annoying to manage. Things can't even take the standardized tests that they need to take each year.
 
I would not touch a chromebook to save my life. My mobile needs are actually technical and support for others and therefore, anything less than a Surface Pro 3 or equivalent would be of no value to me. Honestly, I am surprised that folks around here are not raging about the data being insecure in the cloud. Guess they are willing to sacrifice anything as long as it is not a Microsoft product, LOL! :D

Oh well, to each their own but, I see no real value in them. (Heck, you cannot even use them on the crapper. :D )
 
Ok sure, if you're a totally web based platform then why not... the Chromebook is the ultimate web browser. I could probably do about half my work on it (assuming the Chromebook has some RDP functionality, which I assume it does, I can jump to a server and do admin tasks that way).... but word/excel/visio is the deal breaker. I spend a chunk of my work hours in visio and it brings my i7 Dell laptop to it's knees.
 
I have an old 11" dual core Acer I bring with me when I travel. Little bigger than the old netbooks, but several times faster.
I need something running windows so I can remote desktop and VPN as needed.

Was thinking about replacing it, but upgraded it with 500GB SSD instead. Fast enough to do anything I need while on the road, and fast enough to play movies. Even has a full size HDMI port to connect to a TV in the room.
 
I bought a Chromebook about a month ago just to see what they are all about. I found one on sale on Newegg for about $150 (Lenovo N22). It is actually a nice, little laptop for what it can do and was quite impressed by it's battery life. Unfortunately, for me it is no more than personal toy at this point. My Surface Pro 3 is still my work horse device for when I need to be mobile for work.
 
SGTGimpy said:
I bought a Chromebook about a month ago just to see what they are all about. I found one on sale on Newegg for about $150 (Lenovo N22). It is actually a nice, little laptop for what it can do and was quite impressed by it's battery life. Unfortunately, for me it is no more than personal toy at this point. My Surface Pro 3 is still my work horse device for when I need to be mobile for work.
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I know there are a lot of Microsoft bashers around here and Chromebooks are fine for what they are but there's not way that a cheap one is going compete with a Surface Pro.
 
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heatlesssun said:
I know there are a lot of Microsoft bashers around here and Chromebooks are fine for what they are but there's not way that a cheap one is going compete with a Surface Pro.
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No doubt. It is like saying sure the toyota yaris is a great little car gets me where I need to go no issues... but when it comes right to it I just love the way my BMW drives so much better. (ok I'm not saying anything made by MS is anything even close to a luxury product. lol Still you can't compare a $150 machine to one costing over a grand)
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
yeah i use to lug around an 3 year old heavy laptop, ended up getting a chrome book and never looked back.. sure it's basic but i realized all i ever used my laptop for was browsing the web or watching youtube videos/twitch streams.. hard to beat for a couple hundred dollars.
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I had a Netbook that was getting long in the tooth. Looked at what I actually used it for. Video streaming while in bed. Got a Chromebook. Does more than that. Extremely capable little machines even if you just limit what you do with it to the browser. Admittedly, I reflashed the bios on mine so I could install xUbuntu onto it and it ended up becoming my daily driver for 3 years. Sandy Bridge i3 based Celeron. No issues with performance. What did I have open most in xUbuntu? The browser, of course. That accounted for 98% of my daily use of that machine, so I really could have stayed in ChromeOS when it comes down to it.

$149 for some of the models you can find on sale is practically "blister pack on the impulse buy shelf" pricing. What you actually get is so much more than that. But still cheap enough to where you won't cry if it somehow gets crushed in your bag or stolen. That's a big win all around.
 
ChadD said:
No doubt. It is like saying sure the toyota yaris is a great little car gets me where I need to go no issues... but when it comes right to it I just love the way my BMW drives so much better. (ok I'm not saying anything made by MS is anything even close to a luxury product. lol Still you can't compare a $150 machine to one costing over a grand)
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Okay comparison, but at the same time, isn't the same. I'd say it's more like a Yaris vs a truck. When you need to haul some heavy crap, that Yaris just isn't going to do. Majority will be fine with a Yaris, but will buy a Camry instead though.

Anyways, I went with a Surface Pro 3, cause 90% of the time I will not have internet. So I need it to be self sufficient.
 
I needed a new laptop to replace my last Windows one. Went with a 2GHz i3 Dell 13 Chromebook. Man it's fantastic. My Windows laptops just gather dust. On the occasions I have to use them its just a pain...Switch on...ohhh more updates, I can wait!

Still have a workstation for heavy lifting but to be honest 85% of my work can be done on the Chromebook. The other 15% is fixing Windows machines of viruses and other faults.
 
heatlesssun said:
I know there are a lot of Microsoft bashers around here and Chromebooks are fine for what they are but there's not way that a cheap one is going compete with a Surface Pro.
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i don't mind microsoft products, some of them are quite good and probably work great for people that use them for what their intended to do. but none of them fit my needs especially at a 150 dollar price point.

ManofGod said:
I would not touch a chromebook to save my life. My mobile needs are actually technical and support for others and therefore, anything less than a Surface Pro 3 or equivalent would be of no value to me. Honestly, I am surprised that folks around here are not raging about the data being insecure in the cloud. Guess they are willing to sacrifice anything as long as it is not a Microsoft product, LOL! :D

Oh well, to each their own but, I see no real value in them. (Heck, you cannot even use them on the crapper. :D )
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no we're willing to sacrafice the security for the price and not being an idiot and saving high risk information on something that isn't secure. plus i have a little 100GB hard drive from an old laptop in a 10 dollar USB external case that i can fit in my pocket which i use for saving stuff.
 
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My current job bought me a Macbook last year (the new one). It's a 12 inch screen. I actually like the form factor and love how light it is. If you are doing office work and even some Xcode, it works fine and has good battery life. If I did not have the requirements for Xcode, a Chromebook would work for me.
I never want to lug around a 12 lb laptop ever again. Traveling with a 17" laptop is absurd - been there, done that.
(Now, before you grill me too much about using a Mac, I am part of a mobile app development team...kind of required for iOS development)
While I'm at it, my criticisms of the new Macbook:
-USB-C only. This sucks. I have to carry a big adapter to get video out and have access to my regular USB devices.
-No support for the Apple 27" Thunderbolt display on my desk at work. Instead, I'm using my ugly adapter to hook it up to a Dell display (that is one of the cheap models)
-Not a fan of the keyboard. After almost a year of using it, I still make more typing mistakes than I do with regular keyboards.
 
Bigbacon said:
wife school went with chromebooks...total pieces of shit. very annoying to manage. Things can't even take the standardized tests that they need to take each year.
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My school district is moving towards 1:1 with Chromebooks. The State of Florida contracted a company called Air a few years ago to make their new testing software. It works on any Windows machine in recent versions of IE or any of Chrome or Firefox, and more importantly they have a dedicated app for Chromebooks. ChromeOS is NOT difficult to manage via the Google Console, there is just a metric dickload of stuff you can do with them that it can be overwhelming. When someone logs into one of ours, it connects to our wireless network using their standard Windows login credentials (linked to their district email which is used to actually sign in to the Chromebook) which automatically allows them through our web filter with the correct permissions according to their group (students, teachers, administrators, and techs all have different levels of access), they pull down any apps that we mandate they need for their group. Took about a week to test all of the functionality and get the groups set up, but beyond that, in a district with around 3500 Chromebooks so far, it's almost completely buttery smooth.
 
I just googled Charles Schwab and I still have no idea who he is. Whoever he is, I hope his corporate network infrastructure has 100% uptime and is rock solid to rely so heavily on cloud computing.
 
jedimasterben said:
My school district is moving towards 1:1 with Chromebooks. The State of Florida contracted a company called Air a few years ago to make their new testing software. It works on any Windows machine in recent versions of IE or any of Chrome or Firefox, and more importantly they have a dedicated app for Chromebooks. ChromeOS is NOT difficult to manage via the Google Console, there is just a metric dickload of stuff you can do with them that it can be overwhelming. When someone logs into one of ours, it connects to our wireless network using their standard Windows login credentials (linked to their district email which is used to actually sign in to the Chromebook) which automatically allows them through our web filter with the correct permissions according to their group (students, teachers, administrators, and techs all have different levels of access), they pull down any apps that we mandate they need for their group. Took about a week to test all of the functionality and get the groups set up, but beyond that, in a district with around 3500 Chromebooks so far, it's almost completely buttery smooth.
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Exactly. If you are rolling these things out and not using the management console, you will be wasting money on just man hours.
 
We are pushing for Chrome Book leveraging the Management Console and our Corporate Citrix Environment. We have some really good business cases for these devices as opposed to traditional laptop that has to be managed. The one issue I personally had, my Chromebook use requires a internet connection to be usable. My travel overseas puts me in many situations where Wifi is not available and trying to have a cost efficient 4G is not going to happen. I do a lot of work in Excel, and I have not been able to do the same work without a windows device.
 
heatlesssun said:
Chromebooks are definitely very viable if all you need is a web browser and that does cover a lot these days. I think the most interesting development in Chromebooks is the addition of Android devices which fills in a lot of gaps.
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Perfect for a lot of people.

Great for those that use web apps or other remote software. Almost like a thin client.

Many people already get by perfectly with an iPhone and/or iPad. My wife very rarely needs a full PC for what she does - Facebook, email, YouTube, basic internet, online banking, shopping, chat, etc..
 
Scizyr said:
I just googled Charles Schwab and I still have no idea who he is. Whoever he is, I hope his corporate network infrastructure has 100% uptime and is rock solid to rely so heavily on cloud computing.
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Wow. You did not look very hard at all.
 
"They work anytime, all the time"

Except when you don't have an Internet connection, no thanks.
 
rezerekted said:
"They work anytime, all the time"

Except when you don't have an Internet connection, no thanks.
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I, too, use web browsers when I have no internet connection.

(PSST: Chromebook Apps have offline mode support and sync when you get back online.)
 
Scizyr said:
I just googled Charles Schwab and I still have no idea who he is. Whoever he is, I hope his corporate network infrastructure has 100% uptime and is rock solid to rely so heavily on cloud computing.
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There a financial services company .... if there internal network goes down... I doubt very very very highly any of there customers would remain customers if they knew there where tons of Local backups of their data. If the network is down its down. I would have to assume storing the data local wouldn't even be legal. Seeing as Schwab runs Linux servers and has in house support staff I doubt they have down time. There a company with 11+ billion in assets and 6-7+ billion in Revenue every year where not talking some mickey mouse operation. This is a pretty solid win for Google.

Don't worry though windows boosters these guys haven't been a MS company in ages.

Heres a story about their switch to red hat way back in 2003
Schwab Deploys Linux-based Grid

These days if you search Schwabs job openings you see they don't run anything MS. They look for Unix and Linux admins and support staff. Those support openings include jobs for folks dealing with Linux terminals... so I would have to assume there a pretty much zero MS corp.
 
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rezerekted said:
"They work anytime, all the time"

Except when you don't have an Internet connection, no thanks.
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Wow do you live in the third world or something?

If I don't have an internet connection at a particular time, it's because I chose not to have one. Been that way for many years now.

Plus I know a lot of companies that if the network/internet goes down then everyone stops working on their Windows machines and goes for coffee/lunch. Nature of the beast now.
 
daglesj said:
Wow do you live in the third world or something?

If I don't have an internet connection at a particular time, it's because I chose not to have one. Been that way for many years now.

Plus I know a lot of companies that if the network/internet goes down then everyone stops working on their Windows machines and goes for coffee/lunch. Nature of the beast now.
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You use a mobile device when you travel. Not when you're at home.
If you rely on the internet to do any critical task then you make yourself dependent on a third unknown party. That's why when I travel I copy everything that is essential for doing my job onto the internal hard drive of the notebooks I'm taking with me.

There are places around where internet is slow, scarce, or even restricted. And no it's not just north korea.

I understand that these minimalistic devices are fine for the usual suit, who is just looking at emails and corporate memos. But they won't suffice when actually doing work and heavy lifting.
 
ChadD said:
There a financial services company .... if there internal network goes down... I doubt very very very highly any of there customers would remain customers if they knew there where tons of Local backups of their data. If the network is down its down. I would have to assume storing the data local wouldn't even be legal.
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What do you mean? Every data has to be located somewhere. It has to be local somewhere by definition.
 
ChadD said:
There a financial services company .... if there internal network goes down... I doubt very very very highly any of there customers would remain customers if they knew there where tons of Local backups of their data. If the network is down its down. I would have to assume storing the data local wouldn't even be legal. Seeing as Schwab runs Linux servers and has in house support staff I doubt they have down time. There a company with 11+ billion in assets and 6-7+ billion in Revenue every year where not talking some mickey mouse operation. This is a pretty solid win for Google.
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100% uptime is hard even for a Fortune 1000. Being rock solid means they have the network throughput to be able to exist entirely in the cloud. I could see this working for a smaller outfit as their data stream won't be quite as large as something like Schwab.

I couldn't imagine doing actual work using a chromebook, the processors in those things are slow as balls and the RAM is usually soldered to the board so no upgrade possible.
 
M76 said:
You use a mobile device when you travel. Not when you're at home.
If you rely on the internet to do any critical task then you make yourself dependent on a third unknown party. That's why when I travel I copy everything that is essential for doing my job onto the internal hard drive of the notebooks I'm taking with me.

There are places around where internet is slow, scarce, or even restricted. And no it's not just north korea.

I understand that these minimalistic devices are fine for the usual suit, who is just looking at emails and corporate memos. But they won't suffice when actually doing work and heavy lifting.
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Not a problem in my part of the world or the places I usually travel. My point is this is 2016, I have decent internet where ever I go. I do not have such worries and if most people realised it's not 1996 anymore, they wouldn't too. Been using Chromebooks for over four years now and have had far fewer hassles than the previous fifteen using Windows laptops. If you live in the middle of the Amazon the decision to buy a Chromebook or a Surface Pro to work best with the 'internet' wouldn't probably be in the top 100 priorities, I grant you that.

The bottom line is...Chromebooks and internet connectivity are not an issue for most people in the civilised world. They do the job just fine. More of us are finding that so it's not going to go away.
 
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