"Google in December announced a program to give its Chromebook computers to schools for $99 each."
That's an interesting use of "give."
Anyway, the idea of an ad free search engine hits right at the heart of Google's business. While I know many adults who are unconcerned about their own online privacy, many of them have serious concerns about their children's.
I don't see how targeting children with an adfree product with the stated intention of turning them into lifetime Bing users (with ads) is improving on Google's creepiness.
I don't think Microsoft's main goal is to indoctrinate the youth (though that's a desirable aim for them, I'm sure).
Their goal is to "cut off the air supply" to Google… just like Google's goal with ChromeOS (and the $249 Chromebooks) is to cut off Microsoft/Apple's profits.
As consumers, sometimes we get a nice deal out of the infighting.
Marketing in the gatekeeper model pitches the product both to children and their parents, it suggests that parents (or schools in loco parentis) are right to exhibit veto power in regards to what children consume. School districts really have no other option - it's potential political dynamite if a nine year old girl nags Mom for Revlon nail polish based upon advertizing delivered while using the schools computers for an academic project.
I'm not saying that Microsoft is motivated purely by altruism - however, Microsoft could probably offer everybody (not just students) ad free search and still be massively profitable and there's not a damn thing Google can do about it.
Privacy issues are a potential long term limitation on Google's business model and kids grow up fast.
Do you use ChromeOS or have you installed something else?
If it is a ChromeOS device, I don't believe you. You cannot be an effective sysadmin administrator on a ChromeOS machine unless you're propping up Google Apps and nothing else.
If you have installed something else, the value proposition of a pixel is flawed and your education district shouldn't have paid for it.
You can get an SSH terminal on ChromeOS (either dev-mode or via a Chrome app). You can also get a remote desktop client. That's all you need for the vast majority of system administration tasks. Typically you use your primary desktop to connect to a server to do any other tasks.
And, I would think that for most school work, having a computer that the kids can't break would be an admin's dream.
So, the ChromeOS notebook should work as good as anything for that job.
> My kids can't break their windows machine, because I know what I'm doing and have set up a strong security policy.
In my experience, I find that regardless of policy, windows computers are more likely to break down at one point or another. Curious though, what do you do different to mitigate that inevitability?
1. Secure by default. The default windows configuration is not secure by default - it's a compromise that is used to make it usable for people. You can (with Group Policy) lock the machine down heavily then allow things as they are required. I do this.
2. Good hardware. They have a Dell Precision T3500 rather than some shitty disposable piece of crap. I expect this will last around 8-10 years.
Windows is perfectly fine if you understand it. We have 377 Windows machines and 205 Linux machines in total. Reliability statistics are approximately the same. The only issues we get is with hardware packing in occasionally (usually the HP mid-range stuff and their laptops).
My Pixel runs pure ChromeOS (I have Crouton installed as well, but that was when I was still transitioning into a full time Chrome environment)
As others have mentioned:
-I can ssh into any linux box I need.
As others haven't mentioned:
-I can RDP via chrome app to any Windows server I need (Or more commonly I RDP to a "command" server and do all my other work from there.)
This gives the added benefit of keeping my device outside the general workflow of things. I still have a windows laptop loaded with the same image as the average user, but there's really only for dogfooding.
We are a Google Apps heavy shop - so there's that.
I'm missing the logical connection you make between what my school district should and shouldn't pay for... Should your employers not buy Macbooks?
I'm typing this in chromium on ubuntu/xfce, alongside an Eclipse window open working on some Go code, inside of a crouton chroot, on a $250 Samsung Chromebook that has better battery life than any of my previous laptops. I disagree.
In context to education do you really think they're going to use anything other than the OOB configuration?
Oh and the Lenovo T400 I bought last week (Core 2, 2.4, 8Gb RAM, Radeon HD, 128Gb Samsung 840 pro) lasts 8 hours only cost $25 more and doesn't break if you cough near it.
Where can you get a bunch of outdated Thinkpads with custom hardware installed (in my experience, the T400 released four years ago doesn't come with a 128GB Samsung SSD) for that price? How would a school district go about buying a thousand of these off-market, custom-modified laptops?
UK IT brokers have hundreds of them if not thousands floating around. Mine wasn't even used. SSD costs more than the unit. It doesn't take a genius to source that quantity.
HOwever, the school district should buy a pile of shit dell desktops and bolt them to the desks like they probably did before rather than succumb to a low priced promotional Trojan.
Someone probably gets a promotion for saving the cash but do they realise how inflexible the machine is and how tied onto the vendors' platform it is.
I'm quite surprised it took this long. Hasn't Microsoft's strategy in this space for a long time been to sell schools Microsoft stuff insanely cheap to win the mindshare of students, most of whom leave school knowing only of Windows and Office?
My ICT teacher was quite open that Microsoft essentially wrote his curriculum and provided all his funding, and that's why all we learned was Excel/Access.
Actually I wonder why doesn't Microsoft do it for every one? No tracking, no ads just plain old good results. Google has been attacking Microsoft with its scorched earth strategy in many areas (google docs, chrome OS, etc.) And given that google is just a one trick pony, this might affect them more.
No, I'm replying to someone who simultaneously called Google a one-trick pony and suggested that they're attacking Microsoft on many fronts, which seemed like an odd kind of thing for a one-trick pony to be able to do.
Don't know why you got the idea I was referring to Microsoft at all.
Edit: To clarify, and before I get another laundry list of achievements, I clearly don't think Google is one either.
Can you elaborate? People are turning for Bing for image searches for "research" purposes since google disabled the disabling of the content filter in the US?
More relevant, this has long been Apple's strategy. One which has evolved from primary education onto college campuses by following the money - money in the form of student loans.
I don't know if that's what got people hooked though. I remember using Apples as a kid at school, hated them, used PC's up until college and Apple introduced the Mac Air, at which point I switched and haven't looked back.
I don't know if it's the McDonald's strategy either---kids love McDonalds, then grow out of them.
I'd say it's more like the tobacco industry's strategy. Most smokers I know got hooked as kids and couldn't quit after growing up.
Even more relevant, isn't this Microsoft's strategy in this space anyway? Provide Windows and Office super cheap to schools and make sure it's all that gets taught?
Not sure I understand this - if a school so desperately wants ad-free search, just deploy an adblock plugin to the school's browsers? It's a very strange thing to 'give away' as an incentive.
Microsoft is providing an institutional scaled solution to solve institutional scale problems. Students don't just search on school computers. They search from home, and often their school's website serves as an entry portal - eg. the student fires up the browser on their home computer with a link to a school or class web page. This provides a familiar starting point for continuing the lesson from home.
Why? Well that's a reasonably safe way for parents to allow computer use with less supervision. It's not quite a walled garden, but at least there's a shared interest among the adults.
In other words, Microsoft is helping school districts solve the problem of solving problems for parents - and without having to stipulate which browser people use at home or in the classroom - many mobile browsers do not allow plugins.
But does it matter that much...Most schools are using Win7 (or, sadly, Vista) at this point and I would wager most set IE as the default browser. As most educational networked software targets IE. Many of the 'secured' browser based exam companies base their model around IE. And most schools don't allow you to change the default browser (at least in a way that persists across logins)
At home, kids use iPads and Android phones, etc. Schools often provide a portal and children use that portal both out of habit and at the direction of their parents.
And as public institutions [under the US system] parents look to the schools both to provide proper resources for completing out of school assignments and are willing to assign blame for technological issues which are for practical matter beyond the school's control - i.e what comes across the student's browser while sitting at the kitchen table.
Outside the bubble, most people are not that tech savvy and the trend is toward passive use of browsing devices not managing plug-ins and maintaining browser side scripts. And outside the bubble, people use school websites as portals - the schools are setting them up that way.
Microsoft is marketing something simple - if you get advertizing you clicked on the wrong link. That can be explained to the principal, the teacher in the classroom, the student, their dad, and the president of the school board - and without much more than those literal words.
I can't help but feel that this is typical of Microsoft's sales/PR team.
Generate a false problem:
"You don't wan't ads on your search engine do you!?"
Claim to have a solution:
"You can use Bing! We don't have ads for students!"
As a systems admin for a large school district, I'm very comfortable stating that what Microsoft and Apple offer to education is a joke compared to Google's offerings.
I'm curious, what do you feel "Google's offerings" are when it comes to education?
I'm asking because besides search, and the ability to search effectively, which I think is a very necessary skill for a modern education, I've never considered Google as company with educational offerings.
Chromebooks solve 90% of the issues the average school district faces (How do I build collaborative works?(Docs/Drive) How do I ensure student files are protected? (Drive)
How do I handle deployment? Imaging and servicing 3000-7000 windows computers requires a pretty substantial professional IT department in the business world - I've worked in several schools that handle that volume with teams ranging from 2 to 5.
So when Google comes along and says
"Hey, for $199 here's a system that has an expected life of 2 years, minimal deployment overhead and integrated services that connect to your existing AD infrastructure"
It's a no brainer.
Chromebooks will, without question, be dominant in schools everywhere in the next 2 years.
That's an interesting use of "give."
Anyway, the idea of an ad free search engine hits right at the heart of Google's business. While I know many adults who are unconcerned about their own online privacy, many of them have serious concerns about their children's.
Google is entangled with Schmidt's creepy line.