Chromebooks in Schools: 1M Sold Last Quarter

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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If you are having trouble finding a Chromebook for your personal use, it may be harder than you think to land one. The biggest reason for the scarcity of late would be the nation’s school systems gobbling them up at a rate of one Million units in the last quarter alone.

Dell said it was temporarily discontinuing direct Chromebook 11 sales to individuals because it can’t keep up with demand from commercial channels for the education-focused laptop.
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My district just bought several hundred units this summer, not including the several hundred purchased over the last year, and as soon as another grant comes in we'll be getting many more of them.
 
Last Christmas, I gave my Dad an Acer c720 Chromebook as he was getting a virus on his Windows machine every two months or so. Anti-virus didn't seem to help and even after I reinstalled Windows, he kept getting viruses, probably from email attachments since he only surfed to a very limited number of websites. In the seven months since receiving the c720, he has only called me once.. for some reason the Chromebook wasn't accepting his password.. but after a few days that mysteriously fixed itself and no problems since. He just visits a few sites and checks email so a perfect machine for him. He still has his Windows machine when he needs to print things out or play games.

I have been tempted myself to get a Chromebook mainly to use for when I go to sites like Amazon, eBay, Newegg or where a secure log in is necessary like for banking or my son's college account. At the moment I just have dedicated a Windows laptop that I do nothing else with except what I just described. I have even thought about putting the Chrome OS on an old laptop. I just don't trust Windows to be a very secure OS.. I guess too much listening to "Security Now" and going to Krebs on Security & Schneier on Security.
 
Insula Gilliganis said:
Last Christmas, I gave my Dad an Acer c720 Chromebook as he was getting a virus on his Windows machine every two months or so. Anti-virus didn't seem to help and even after I reinstalled Windows, he kept getting viruses, probably from email attachments since he only surfed to a very limited number of websites. In the seven months since receiving the c720, he has only called me once.. for some reason the Chromebook wasn't accepting his password.. but after a few days that mysteriously fixed itself and no problems since. He just visits a few sites and checks email so a perfect machine for him. He still has his Windows machine when he needs to print things out or play games.

I have been tempted myself to get a Chromebook mainly to use for when I go to sites like Amazon, eBay, Newegg or where a secure log in is necessary like for banking or my son's college account. At the moment I just have dedicated a Windows laptop that I do nothing else with except what I just described. I have even thought about putting the Chrome OS on an old laptop. I just don't trust Windows to be a very secure OS.. I guess too much listening to "Security Now" and going to Krebs on Security & Schneier on Security.
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Wait... you can't print on chromebook?
 
450 said:
You can't even use network printers?
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It's all about drivers. If the Chrome OS doesn't know how to talk to the printer then that is the issue. I've personally never tried it that way, but it's been my understanding that it's gotta be through Google Cloud Print. I think that there may be network printers compatible with GCP, though.
 
My Samsung color laser printer supports Google Cloud Print - works like a charm via a Chromebook.
 
Glad to know I've been buying a crapload of Chromebooks even though I have no kids.
 
I'm not a Chrome OS fan, but this is probably the better option if the other is buying iPads.
 
Yeah, a few schools started using them and are buying them by the hundreds in my area also.

After looking into HOW the schools implement and use them, it seems chromebooks are much better suited for schools (teacher monitoring student activities and progress to name a couple) than other gadgets like ipads.

Bonus on top of being better suited and having a keyboard (what a thought!) is the chromebooks are also cheaper than ipad.
 
Instead of TV raising your kids, you can have them raised by the internet. That is such an improvement.
 
Bought my daughter a C720 for all her works teachers are asking that all work is submitted through Google docs for her AP classes
 
I've used some chromebooks for one of my elementary schools. It works good for the teachers. Instead of having to wait for a computer to boot up and log in the chromebook is up and running faster and it's already launched the web browser. The schools mainly use web based intervention programs to teach the kids so all they need is a web browser.

My problem with them is configuring them and keeping them in static state. If someone makes changes to the account the kids use then it can cause problems. After a year of kids using them I haven't ran into a complaint about them that was a major issue though. I know some other "Google Schools" use individual student accounts but we're using these computers in a elementary school, most of the kids don't even know their student number to use as a login.

I have them in my office right now so I'll mess with them after summer, I got two weeks to see what the kids did to them. I know I reimage the standard laptops at the end of the year to remove the mess the kids left from over the year.
 
pxc said:
I'm not a Chrome OS fan, but this is probably the better option if the other is buying iPads.
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I was thinking the same thing. If anything, at least it is a better use of taxpayer resources. I still find those things useless, but I can see how it might be perfect in those types of academic settings.
 
BladeVenom said:
40% of commercial laptops sold last month were Chromebooks.
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Shhh don't tell the MS investors & Neowin fanboys that smugly write off Chromebooks as irrelevant because they don't show up on certain browser usage stat sites.

Another computing shift is happening right under everyone's noses, these things are huge in schools, Google Docs is the defacto collaboration suite up in colleges & universities. In fairness to Microsoft they did finally wake up and begin to take Chromebooks seriously, since they've been trying to enable lower end Windows devices be priced lower by reducing or eliminating the Windows license cost to OEMs.
 
jpm100 said:
Instead of TV raising your kids, you can have them raised by the internet. That is such an improvement.
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I learned a helluva lot more on the internet then I did on TV when I was a kid. So yes, IMO, it's a big improvement.
 
PCunicorn said:
I learned a helluva lot more on the internet then I did on TV when I was a kid. So yes, IMO, it's a big improvement.
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When most of what's there is crap in both TV and the internet, increasing the quantity isn't necessarily an improvement.
 
All I hear about are schools spending more money on shit, but have there been any actual studies that tech is creating better students?
 
Oh, and the property taxes that schools get are fucking OUTRAGEOUS.
 
Although these are a hell of a lot better than iPads I kind of wish Google's cloud service backing them would either just stop working to teach everyone a lesson about relying on cloud based anything or suffer a massive data breach exposing just how sleazy their spying business practice is. Wishful thinking I know, but it needs to happen to get everyone's head out of their ass about this company and their products/services.
 
Hold on a second before you go nuts about spending and so on.

The answer is that they are cheap TCO is lower, all things that are meh to me. However the real crap kicker is the newer education standards and standardized computer based testing. These work for them and are cheaper than netbooks which aren't even big enough.

In my district we will need so many machines because the testing almost wants to be one to one! We are no were near that ratio but have a tiny window to test EVERYONE.
 
jpm100 said:
Instead of TV raising your kids, you can have them raised by the internet. That is such an improvement.
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Just hope they find the deep disturbing part of the internet that then gets feds to show up at your door.
Megalith said:
All I hear about are schools spending more money on shit, but have there been any actual studies that tech is creating better students?
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Pointless venture creating better students requires major overhauling of the US school system. Which in general favors those who are already self applied and will help those already great students go further but, it does nothing to help those who aren't due to outlying circumstances that has nothing to do with school.
 
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