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Google Glitch Took Thousands of Chromebooks Offline (geekwire.com)
Slashdot reader Bismillah was the first to notice stories about Chromebooks going offline. GeekWire reports:
Tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of Google Chromebooks, widely prized by schools due to their low cost and ease of configuration, were reported to be offline for several hours on Tuesday. The apparent cause? A seemingly botched WiFi policy update pushed out by Google that caused many Chromebooks to forget their approved network connection, leaving students disconnected.
Google eventually issued a new network policy without the glitch -- but not everyone was satisfied. The Director of Technology at one school district complains Google waited three and a half hours before publicly acknowledging the problem -- adding that "manually joining a WiFi network on 10,000+ Chromebooks is a nightmare."
Google eventually issued a new network policy without the glitch -- but not everyone was satisfied. The Director of Technology at one school district complains Google waited three and a half hours before publicly acknowledging the problem -- adding that "manually joining a WiFi network on 10,000+ Chromebooks is a nightmare."
... and expect to use that as a PC.
Schools do NOT expect to use Chromebooks as PCs. They use them as thin clients, running everything in a browser. The kids can't mess them up, because, well, there is nothing on them.
The schools know what they want, and Chromebooks deliver it. Nobody is being deceived.
..because the vendor pushed out an untested update again. Now we are teaching children to accept being dependent on a single point of tech failure. Good old pen and paper is still better, your brain retains the info better too.
-Time to seed my lawn, get off.