Chromebooks now have 50%+ of the USA education market

[trents]

52% and counting of computers in the US educational sector are now Chromebooks. This has got to have Microsoft and Apple quaking in their boots. Those kids will take that technology into their homes and offices when they leave school. Inexpensive, simple, practically trouble free and essentially immune to malware, they do everything the average person does with a computer.

And from an IT perspective they are a dream. Google has developed some excellent management console software that communicates beautifully with Windows-based active domain servers.

Not only that but Google will soon merge the Chrome OS with android so that all those great android apps will run on the netbook but with a larger screen. How cool is that!

 

[ATMINSIDE]

I think you mean "are now" instead of "are not".

 

[trents]

Yep. Thanks for catching that. Funny how one wrong key stroke can completely change the meaning of a statement.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

No kidding!
Crazy statistic though, I had no idea the Chromebook had taken off so much.

 

[Stratus_ss]

Chromebooks outsold the macbooks last year I believe

 

[EarthDog]

52% and counting of computers in the US educational sector are now Chromebooks.

Chromebooks outsold the macbooks last year I believe

Not surprised in the least. Outside of one outlier, they are all priced between $150 and $300 while the cheapest macbook on their website starts from $1299(?).

 

[DuckDodgers]

Working in the tech side of the education system I am curious how this change is being received in the industry. Our higher ups are pushing for us to transition to the Chrome book realm. Input from those actually working with these would be great.

 

[trents]

I can't give a lot of details yet. I'm on the technology team at a small private school in my community and the school just purchased 24 chromebooks. We haven't deployed them yet and with the school year fast coming to a close we may not do that until the start of next school year. What I can tell you is that we had a couple of IT guys from our two local high schools come and share their experience with us as the high schools have been using them now for three years I think. What they told us was that they present far fewer maintenance headaches from an IT perspective than do Windows-based computers and managing them from the Windows-based active domain server is seamless. From an IT perspective they have as much control over the chromebooks from the server side as they do the Windows clients. They said the only real hiccups with the Chromebooks had to do with printing. Sometimes the hard copy product wasn't quite right on the printouts. Of course, chromebooks print through the cloud. But these two IT guys were very positive about their experience with Chromebooks and the teachers and kids are in love with them.

Oh, yes, and these guys said they have the chromebooks configured to reset to default values after every use. No changes made by the kids to the unit are retained from one use to another. They each have their own gmail account so their classwork is saved on the cloud.

Hope this helps.

 

[Stratus_ss]

I worry about the privacy implications of chromebooks however.

I know the school owns them and google supder-duper promises not to do anything with the data from minors....

notwithstanding that, how about desensitizing the next generation to giving up all their privacy? That makes me cry a little on the inside.... its hard to teach them good habits when everything is being stored on the "cloud"

Cloud btw is just a fancy word for "on someone else's computer you cannot control". A whole swath of these people are just going to erode my own privacy as there will be so many people oblivious to privacy and security concerns around their data that I will be throwing a pebble into the ocean (or I will just have to stop using the internet altogether)

 

[trents]

I hear you Stratus. I think we all share that concern to one degree or another. But even Windows-based computers are not immune to this transition. Everybody, Google, Microsoft, Apple is moving to the cloud whether we like it or not. Some of them are just a little farther down the road than others. Times are way past when we could "get off the grid." Computing is the internet; it is the cloud now. And yes, there will be security breaches from time to time as there have already been. I just don't know if there is any viable alternative if you want to use the internet.