Posts by pepperminttea

Wait, that's no moon 21.5-inch monitor, it's an all-in-one LG Chromebase PC

Re: How do you manage these?

1) Chrome OS Management licences are a bolt on per-device that let you manage them from the Google Management web console for the Google Apps domain they belong to.

2) Pass. There are two factor options available, e.g. the Google Authenticator app on your smartphone, but I'm not sure that's one of them.

3) As well as the Citrix Receiver there's also Ericom's Access Now that can run TS within a browser window via HTML5. Unless I'm completely misremembering VMWare had an HTML5 client in the works as well, that's quite possibly finished now.

Not cool, Adobe: Give the Ninite guys a job, not the middle finger

Use the MSI?

After applying for their distribution licence, I've rolled out and updated Flash from the MSI and controlled it with the mms.cfg file for the last couple of years with little incident using plain old vanilla group policy deployment.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/flash_player_admin_guide.html

http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/administration-configure-auto-update-notification.html

Hope that helps and all that.

Chromebooks: the flop of 2011?

As a standalone consumer product, especially at their current price point I don't believe it is worth it.

In something like an educational environment where Google Apps is free and manageable the TCO starts to look interesting, not compelling, but interesting. For under £550/unit over three years (for the Chromebook and access to the management service for the Chromebooks) the machine just needs electricity and wifi.

They certainly aren't all round laptop/PC replacements, but for a defined use they are excellent. I wouldn't buy them for what they can't do. Is there another device that can do what the Chromebook can do better than the Chromebook - i.e. central management, sub 10 second boot, web browsing, all day on a single battery charge at all or at the Chromebook's price point?

(Part of me is suspicious that it isn't easier to manage Android tablets as if it were then something like an Asus Transformer would make the Chromebook completely obsolete.)

I'm just hoping Samsung have a warehouse full of them that they want to knock out at a low price after Christmas.

I have only just noticed that this Chromebook has a lower-case keyboard.

I think they're a device with tremendous potential, but they appear very overpriced when compared to normal laptops.

If your company or institution is buying into Google Apps the integration works beautifully. Pull any Chromebook off the self, turn it on from cold and you're away within 10 seconds. It's only through playing with one that I've truly appreciated it, but I wouldn't have parted with £350 of my own money to find that out, and therein lies part of the problem. A price point more in line with netbooks and cheaper tablets of say sub £200 might see people take a punt on them.

(If you aren't using Google Apps etc then it pretty much is just a laptop-shaped web browser.)