Surface RT costs $200 - about the same as a chromebook.
Ms Office365 is free for educators/students - same price as Google Docs.
MS includes OneDrive cloud storage and email for free - just like Google does.
A prudent school administrator could build an MS-centric environment for the same initial cost as a Google-centric one, and with the same on-going costs.
Choosing Windows 8.1 with Bing devices in-place of the Surface RT would open up the entirety of the PC software world (within reason) for about the same cost as either a Chromebook or a Surface RT deployment.
Unless the online test requires IE... Then they are 109% useless! unless you have a bank of Windows servers acting as Remote Desktop Servers, blowing away your imagined cost savings.
At a unit price of about 1/2 that of an iPad, they were able to sell 2% more in one quarter, generating about 1/2 the sales revenue if the iPads sold that same quarter.
iPads enjoy superior engineering and have proven themselves to survive mass deployments among school-age children - Chromebooks are built to a certain price-point, a very low price-point, and that requires a lot of compromises in the actual engineering and materials used.
A dropped ipad gets scratched, a dropped chromebook shatters.
Ever heard of 'Brain Pop' or 'Study Island'? If not, do you remember playing Oregon Trail in the '80s? If you told most public school teachers you were going to prohibit students playing games, even educational games, on computers, far fewer teachers would fight to get computers in their classrooms...
Logins everywhere. To login to these cheapy windows devices, you need to either have local accounts, or a "live" or "microsoft account". This means you need a "live" login to get past the login screen, and an Office 365 login to do any work - it's madness.
Yes, this is madness, but in time I'm sure this too will be sorted out OR a school could simply use Google a Docs and Google Drive on their Windows With Bing devices and avoid the madness... Remember, anything you can run on a desktop can run on these devices, something that can't be said for Chromebooks.
The OS that ships in the cheapy laptops cannot be joined to a traditional domain. User management and policies for these devices cannot be centrally managed. Google's management tools are fantastic.
The OS MS offers on the very low-end devices is a zero-cost version of Windows 8.1 - it is full Windows 8.1 with one difference, it is not allowed for the OEM (Dell, HP, etc) to alter the default search engine from Bing or browser from IE11. The end-user is absolutely free to change default search engine/browser to anything they like.
The OS, as shipped, does not support joining a domain, but an upgrade can be performed to Windows 8.1 Pro without having to re-image the device. Schools that choose to participate in Educational Advantage will have access to the appropriate product keys to do so, along with all needed server CALs, local copies of MS Office 2013, and access to future OS upgrades.
The quad-core Atom processor in most low-cost Win8.1 tablets is well up to the tasks of a tablet, esp. When coupled with 2 Gigs of RAM,but even still, the HO Stream 7, at $100 list price with 1 Gig of RAM is surprisingly useful.
Microsoft's "version" of a chromebook is something like the HP Stream 14. It's about the same price and about the same quality. Unfortunately, these do not run a locked-down/hardened version of windows. They run the same desktop OS everything else does. This means you need AV, imaging tools....etc to mass deploy these things. Chromebooks don't need any of that stuff - yet.
Wait until there are countless millions of chromebooks, deployed by IT-ignorant school administrators in smaller schools/districts (as opposed to IT pros in larger districts), do you think maybe, just maybe, their market share will be great enough to warrant the attention if virus writers?
The reason Linux (and to a lesser degree OS X) are 'virus-free' is because of their pitiful market share. Last I looked, a Windows Vista had several times the market share of *all* Linux distributions! and I think a multiple of the OS X market share. Why write software targeted to such a small segment of the market - with viruses it's all about the numbers.
Let's see, schools across America bought millions of iPads these last few years, and arguably they have a useful life of, uhm, several years right? Couldn't it be that the demand has abated because the need that can be addressed by a $400+ device has largely been met?
Now schools are buying slightly more chromebooks (2% more by my calculation, 715K chromebooks vs 702K iPads), hurrah! They cost half as much as an iPad and early reports are that their build quality 'inhales deeply' and is ill-suited to the rigors of K-12 education. I know of one deployment in an upscale school district where Dell Chromebooks have a 15% failure rate due to student 'abuse' - in 2 months! (That's 60 chromebooks that had to be sent out for depot repair in a deployment of ~400 chromebooks to 8th graders.)
I think it's fair to say that chromebooks while less expensive than an iPad also have correspondingly shorter useful lives...
iPads are *great* as assistive devices for the handicapped/severely challenged student, unlike the chromebook in many cases, because of the iPads touchscreen interface.
What dou you have against on-demand toast? Millions of people go hungry every day, making toasters more accessible might just help some hungry people...
Police have no more latitude than you or I when they allowed to use deadly force.
Yes, they do, because their job forces them into life-and-death situations they are given wider latitude than a private citizen that chooses to insert themselves into a given situation.
Where do you think the federal government gets it's money? From local taxpayers.
I agree this is a local, not federal, problem - I find it hard to believe that every Barney Fife across the country needs to wear a body camera because one cop in Ferguson killed someone that was attacking him.
FOIA laws only require departments to produce documents that are requested IF they already exist. A well-crafted retention policy could make this fairly manageable, and FOIA also allows agencies to charge reasonable charges for documents they produce (think $1/page).
Whenever I take out my wallet to pay for something I keep my wallet in my hand until I get back whatever credit card, ID, or 'reward card' I take out - since I started doing that I've *never* lost a card or my wallet, three decades and counting.
BTW, people keep much more in their wallet than just ways to pay for things - ID cards, notes, receipts, etc. - yes, many of those could be turned into notes on a smart phone or handled differently (for example, emailed receipts), but until that happens, a new form of payment (ApplePay) won't have many people firing themselves from the 'burden' of carrying a wallet.
Go here - http://www.washingtonpost.com/... - and talk about how the worst Republian-drawn districts are so much worse than the worst Democrat-drawn district.
Both parties have been doing it for years, and every election the losers complain about gerrymandering the other party did.
This study assumes that every voter in NC voted for their representatives based on political party and nothing else, that politician of the same party are interchangeable.
Politicians in one district never campaign outside their district, because that would be wasted effort since voters in other districts can't vote for them.
as a mathematical exercise I *guess* it has some value, if one felt the need to prove there's a reason congressional districts look the way they do geographically - but did anyone think there was any other reason for the shapes of congressional districts?
The feds are 3 months into their 'civil rights' investigation and have all but conceded they is no case to be made... To cover their bases, they are also investigating 20 other police departments, 'fishing' for something to do (never let a crisis go to waste).
Slashdot Mirror
Surface RT costs $200 - about the same as a chromebook.
Ms Office365 is free for educators/students - same price as Google Docs.
MS includes OneDrive cloud storage and email for free - just like Google does.
A prudent school administrator could build an MS-centric environment for the same initial cost as a Google-centric one, and with the same on-going costs.
Choosing Windows 8.1 with Bing devices in-place of the Surface RT would open up the entirety of the PC software world (within reason) for about the same cost as either a Chromebook or a Surface RT deployment.
Unless the online test requires IE... Then they are 109% useless! unless you have a bank of Windows servers acting as Remote Desktop Servers, blowing away your imagined cost savings.
At a unit price of about 1/2 that of an iPad, they were able to sell 2% more in one quarter, generating about 1/2 the sales revenue if the iPads sold that same quarter.
iPads enjoy superior engineering and have proven themselves to survive mass deployments among school-age children - Chromebooks are built to a certain price-point, a very low price-point, and that requires a lot of compromises in the actual engineering and materials used.
A dropped ipad gets scratched, a dropped chromebook shatters.
Are you saying you don't think Foxconn is a socially responsible company?
You forgot one thing:
0. Play (educational) games
Ever heard of 'Brain Pop' or 'Study Island'? If not, do you remember playing Oregon Trail in the '80s? If you told most public school teachers you were going to prohibit students playing games, even educational games, on computers, far fewer teachers would fight to get computers in their classrooms...
Millions of kids will learn the GUI interface on top of Linux... And it is largely a browser-centric interface in most cases.
Yes, this is madness, but in time I'm sure this too will be sorted out OR a school could simply use Google a Docs and Google Drive on their Windows With Bing devices and avoid the madness... Remember, anything you can run on a desktop can run on these devices, something that can't be said for Chromebooks.
The OS MS offers on the very low-end devices is a zero-cost version of Windows 8.1 - it is full Windows 8.1 with one difference, it is not allowed for the OEM (Dell, HP, etc) to alter the default search engine from Bing or browser from IE11. The end-user is absolutely free to change default search engine/browser to anything they like.
The OS, as shipped, does not support joining a domain, but an upgrade can be performed to Windows 8.1 Pro without having to re-image the device. Schools that choose to participate in Educational Advantage will have access to the appropriate product keys to do so, along with all needed server CALs, local copies of MS Office 2013, and access to future OS upgrades.
The quad-core Atom processor in most low-cost Win8.1 tablets is well up to the tasks of a tablet, esp. When coupled with 2 Gigs of RAM,but even still, the HO Stream 7, at $100 list price with 1 Gig of RAM is surprisingly useful.
Wait until there are countless millions of chromebooks, deployed by IT-ignorant school administrators in smaller schools/districts (as opposed to IT pros in larger districts), do you think maybe, just maybe, their market share will be great enough to warrant the attention if virus writers?
The reason Linux (and to a lesser degree OS X) are 'virus-free' is because of their pitiful market share. Last I looked, a Windows Vista had several times the market share of *all* Linux distributions! and I think a multiple of the OS X market share. Why write software targeted to such a small segment of the market - with viruses it's all about the numbers.
Let's see, schools across America bought millions of iPads these last few years, and arguably they have a useful life of, uhm, several years right? Couldn't it be that the demand has abated because the need that can be addressed by a $400+ device has largely been met?
Now schools are buying slightly more chromebooks (2% more by my calculation, 715K chromebooks vs 702K iPads), hurrah! They cost half as much as an iPad and early reports are that their build quality 'inhales deeply' and is ill-suited to the rigors of K-12 education. I know of one deployment in an upscale school district where Dell Chromebooks have a 15% failure rate due to student 'abuse' - in 2 months! (That's 60 chromebooks that had to be sent out for depot repair in a deployment of ~400 chromebooks to 8th graders.)
I think it's fair to say that chromebooks while less expensive than an iPad also have correspondingly shorter useful lives...
iPads are *great* as assistive devices for the handicapped/severely challenged student, unlike the chromebook in many cases, because of the iPads touchscreen interface.
What dou you have against on-demand toast? Millions of people go hungry every day, making toasters more accessible might just help some hungry people...
An MRAP cost $2,000 - just a tiny bit more than one body camera (if you divide 50,000 cameras into $75,000,000 you find each camera costs $1,500)...
Yes, they do, because their job forces them into life-and-death situations they are given wider latitude than a private citizen that chooses to insert themselves into a given situation.
Which way do the police body cameras point?
Away from the officer, making surveillance BY the police, not OF the police...
Where do you think the federal government gets it's money? From local taxpayers.
I agree this is a local, not federal, problem - I find it hard to believe that every Barney Fife across the country needs to wear a body camera because one cop in Ferguson killed someone that was attacking him.
Will that quarter-billion dollars come from?
As a question, why is this a federal problem?
FOIA laws only require departments to produce documents that are requested IF they already exist. A well-crafted retention policy could make this fairly manageable, and FOIA also allows agencies to charge reasonable charges for documents they produce (think $1/page).
Whenever I take out my wallet to pay for something I keep my wallet in my hand until I get back whatever credit card, ID, or 'reward card' I take out - since I started doing that I've *never* lost a card or my wallet, three decades and counting.
BTW, people keep much more in their wallet than just ways to pay for things - ID cards, notes, receipts, etc. - yes, many of those could be turned into notes on a smart phone or handled differently (for example, emailed receipts), but until that happens, a new form of payment (ApplePay) won't have many people firing themselves from the 'burden' of carrying a wallet.
Like Voter ID requirements?
Ever heard of the Secretary Of State Project?
Go here - http://www.washingtonpost.com/... - and talk about how the worst Republian-drawn districts are so much worse than the worst Democrat-drawn district.
Both parties have been doing it for years, and every election the losers complain about gerrymandering the other party did.
Enjoy - from The Washington Post
This study assumes that every voter in NC voted for their representatives based on political party and nothing else, that politician of the same party are interchangeable.
Politicians in one district never campaign outside their district, because that would be wasted effort since voters in other districts can't vote for them.
as a mathematical exercise I *guess* it has some value, if one felt the need to prove there's a reason congressional districts look the way they do geographically - but did anyone think there was any other reason for the shapes of congressional districts?
ONG! Now Ferguson is a food desert!
The feds are 3 months into their 'civil rights' investigation and have all but conceded they is no case to be made... To cover their bases, they are also investigating 20 other police departments, 'fishing' for something to do (never let a crisis go to waste).