PC makers hopeful that Chromebook refresh cycles about to kick in A Chromebook refresh looms despite Google trying to extend the life of laptops by offering a decade of service updates for models sold since 2021. Sales of the hardware, which flew off the shelves during the pandemic, ran out of steam in 2022 after buyers had their fill. The US education market generally accounts for 70 to 80 …
Honestly, I can't help but feel that Google would be worse in Microsoft's position than Microsoft are. The only tech company that I would like to see take Microsoft's markets over less than Google at this rate is Twitter (and thank god that's not happening).
And this isn't because I like MS, it's just because I spend all day working with Google tech and it's all atrocious, in a much more obvious way than MS tech is.
Daughter’s Chromebook has now been in use for 3 school years (UK secondary school = high school in US).* She’ll hand it in this coming September and the school has switched over to Surface Pros, for reasons we have not had fully explained to us, but she’ll be pleased to see the back of it, not least because of the browser-based versions of the Office apps.
* It’s stood up pretty well apart from one battery replacement and losing 50% of the screws on the bottom of the case, idk how.
Main problem in my children's school seems to be power supplies. Children lose them and then nick them from other children. As they are all identical it's impossible to prove whose is whose. As a result parents are having to shell out for new. Although 60W USB-C PSUs aren't phenominally expensive these days there is always the possibility someone will buy cheap tat online and end up with an indoor bonfire.
At college, they have struggled with the online 356 apps because there are some things required in the college's submission guidelines which are only available in the desktop versions of (say) Word. So essays can be created online on a personal Chromebook but then have to be "tarted up" on a desktop computer in the library. I believe it's mainly floating textboxes and maybe something to do with footnotes and/or citations.
M.
Once remote learning was done.
Regardless the schools will be wanting a replacement cycle longer than 3 or 4 years. Maybe rich districts like mine could afford that, but the average district where the state is barely giving enough extra money to give teachers cost of living increases? They got special funding to help purchase those last time around, this time they'll have to find that money in their budget which isn't going to happen unless the state government makes it happen. Good luck with that in any state where governors are looking for ways to cut taxes, not raise them.
Here in Sweden you "have to" give each student a laptop (often cheapest chromebook available) because it is the hip IT positive future trend. No, there are few, if any, positive educational outcomes of this, but One Has To Keep Up. Students like it, since it means that they can surf tiktok, chat or play games during class, and the batteries make handy powerbanks if -- when -- their phone battery runs down.
Generally rambunctious puppies threat their chew-toys kinder than the students treat their laptops (maybe less drool?)
The Swedish government has supposedly rejected tablets and laptops, but I can fully understand that there are a lot of people who are so invested in this great experiment that it would take months or even years to stop using them in the classroom.
In the same year the OECD report came out saying that tablets did not improve educational outcomes but hinder them (2015-ish), our school's headmaster decided to give a speech to parents saying they were going to invest in iPads because it was the future of education. Then after the pandemic he jumped on the Chromebook bandwagon. From my point of view the experiment has been a failure, but that won't stop him leaping onto the next big thing (probably Surface).
On the whole too little grunt (cpu), too little memory(ram) and inferior build quality.
ChromeOS is pretty irritating too but that might not be the case for some 50 years younger. :)
Some years ago I purchased a new Chromebook for a song (roughly what it was worth) but low battery life, rubbish keyboard, a lower peculiar screen resolution, slow response and inobvious interface choices put me off but I fiddled with it until I decided to reflash the firmware to run Linux (it was an intel celeron.) Even Linux wasn't fast. Installed Win10 out of sheer perversity - surpringly didn't run much slower than on other real laptops.
Last few years has sat gathering dust with some odd Linux distro installed.
Modern Chromebooks are apparently so locked down that they cannot be repurposed in this manner.
If you actually want education notebooks to have a decent lifespan the up the specs - faster cpu/gpu, reasonable ram, better build quality and repurposable. Upgradeable and reparable would be nice too.
Higher unit costs but might be cheaper in the long term.
One obvious option is to give the devices to the students so they literally own them and hopefully if decent hardware they might take better care of them. Unlock them at the end of their course.
I never really understood the need for devices of any type in the class room. Outside the classroom as a research tool and document preparation tool I can accept.
One obvious option is to give the devices to the students so they literally own them and hopefully if decent hardware they might take better care of them. Unlock them at the end of their course.
This is already done at many schools. The Chromebook is bought by the parents and on first login using the pupil's account the school becomes the administrator (that can be removed with a full reset). The Chromebook is still equally beat-up three to four years later.
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