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New Zealand Chooses Google Chromebooks Over Microsoft Windows 10 For Education (betanews.com)
Google announced this week that it has signed an agreement with New Zealand's Ministry of Education to provide all state and state integrated schools in the country with Chrome Education licenses. The three-year agreement goes into effect on November 1 next month. From a report: "Starting on November 1, as part of an agreement with Google and the New Zealand Ministry of Education, all state and state-integrated schools across New Zealand will be able to start claiming Ministry-funded Chrome Education licenses to manage new and existing unmanaged Chromebooks. The Chrome Education license was developed to make device management in schools a breeze, so that teachers and students can focus on what's most important -- teaching and learning. Equipped with the Chrome Education license, schools can utilize essential education features to better support the many ways Chromebooks are used in the classroom," says Suan Ye, Head of Google for Education, Australia and New Zealand.
I have to say, it's a perfect device for most people. It "just works", and they don't have to have a degree in comp-sci to manage the thing.
We all used to wonder what was going to bring down the Windows monopoly. It's Linux... in the form of Chromebooks.
Yeah yeah someone ALWAYS points out that they can't use one because of UberCadSuperSimulationPublisherLatheController 44.0, but those people are a minuscule minority. They'll keep using Windows for a while yet, but the average person will use a phone for mobile computing, and a Chromebook or work-alike for home use when they want a larger screen. Most people's needs are perfectly met by a device like these.
Chromebooks are what's starting to drive the "year of Linux on the desktop". Not Gnome, not Cinnamon, but ChromeOS. The market hasn't totally flipped yet. It will, and when it happens, Windows is going to fade. Already Chromebooks are approaching 70% of all school purchases in the USA (flew past 60% in early 2018), and people are turning to them for home use too. When that generation of kids gets to be adults, they'll keep using ChromeOS.
You sing praise of Chromebook as if Google is a saint. Just because something has a Linux kernel doesn't mean it deserves to be celebrated. What good is that kernel if it is hidden under layers of nonstandard UI, or tied to cloud services designed to spy on you and monetize your personal data? It's not like the end user of a Chromebook is any better off than on Windows, just more gimped, while giving more of their data to one company.
Microsoft has too much expertise in proprietary tools and user support to say they are going away merely over a single district's choice.
It's not a single district's choice. It's already MOST districts. As in well more than half.
The difference today is that Apples were expensive, and Chromebooks come in affordable ranges for the average working Joe. Also Chromebooks are way easier to manage than Macs, and waaaaaaaay easier than Windows. That's the nail in Microsoft's coffin. (Mac has not enough desktop market share to have a coffin to drive a nail into).
As the NZ school year finishes up in late November/early December, why not save 2+ months of licensing by waiting for the new school yea run February?
The reason why you'd want to go with Windows is that that's probably what most of them will need to use when they enter the workforce. ChromeOS may make a fine teaching tool, but it's not giving them any marketable skills, unless "I'm a wizard at using Google search and updating my Facebook page" is a job skill.
In fact it's not even certain that it's a good teaching tool, there have been plenty of studies showing that introducing laptops to the classroom has anything from little to no effect on performance, through to a net loss in the worst case (they're busy updating their Facebook pages, not learning). So perhaps the choice of Chromebooks is because if you want to follow a fad, you can at least take the cheaper option.
The reason why you'd want to go with Windows is that that's probably what most of them will need to use when they enter the workforce.
No one gets fired for buying IBM., so maybe they should be teaching the kids OS/2.
"The reason why you'd want to go with Windows is that that's probably what most of them will need to use when they enter the workforce."
That works both ways. A big reason why companies use msoffice is because potential work candidates already have msoffice listed on their resume as a skill meaning tha the company doesnt have to train them up as much on how to use that piece of software. If more people listed libreoffice etc more companys would be using that software especially when libreoffice has pretty good compatibility with reading msoffice formats except when microsoft is intentionally being a fuckhead and breaks their own standard.
A lot of office suite skills are transferable, and I would bet good money that someone who trained on Google Sheets and Google Docs can be re-trained on Office 365 suite pretty quickly—much more quickly than someone who literally only did what you said (using Google search and social media).