Unfortunately there isn't an alternative unless you live in a swanky community with a school system that has money thrown at it.
The problem, at this point, is mostly inertial. Google was poised at the right time. Surface SEs are a thing now, but how do you pivot a system that has 5000+ Chromebooks to SEs? Why should you if there is overwhelming support for what you have?
People who use Chromebooks are also really slow and aren't technically savvy at all.
I don't see how you can support that statement at all. It's not like I didn't work tickets for student devices, it just so happens that the overwhelming majority of my tickets that weren't physically damaged Chromebooks were to support faculty devices, which were all Windows.
Non-chromified Linux. It's free, it's better suited to educational purposes than Windows, it runs on anything, and it's actually used in professional settings, unlike ChromeOS.
Listen, I get that Lemmy has a rather unproportionally large user base of Linux users. I like Linux for what it is, I really do. But if you think the job would have been easier by handing users who couldn't operate Windows a Linux laptop you're lost in the sauce. And honestly if you think ChromeOS isn't used in professional settings then you really have no business attempting to suggest a ChromeOS alternative for what is usually the largest Tech Departments, in terms of number of end users, in the majority of Cities and Counties across the U.S.
As a former larger school district sysadmin all I’m going to say is Fuccckkkkk Surface products. The repair ability of surface devices (sans Surface Laptops) is so bad it’s basically a throwaway device. We wouldn’t dare switch from ChromeOS to that, not because of the whole Microsoft problem or learning a new ecosystem but just simply because we cannot possibly in-house repair those devices and Microsoft support on surface devices is Asssssssss. I had one bad surface in my life and I spent half a work day with MS Support just to get them to send me a box to ship it in so they could repair it.
Unfortunately there isn't an alternative unless you live in a swanky community with a school system that has money thrown at it.
The problem, at this point, is mostly inertial. Google was poised at the right time. Surface SEs are a thing now, but how do you pivot a system that has 5000+ Chromebooks to SEs? Why should you if there is overwhelming support for what you have?
I don't see how you can support that statement at all. It's not like I didn't work tickets for student devices, it just so happens that the overwhelming majority of my tickets that weren't physically damaged Chromebooks were to support faculty devices, which were all Windows.
Non-chromified Linux. It's free, it's better suited to educational purposes than Windows, it runs on anything, and it's actually used in professional settings, unlike ChromeOS.
Listen, I get that Lemmy has a rather unproportionally large user base of Linux users. I like Linux for what it is, I really do. But if you think the job would have been easier by handing users who couldn't operate Windows a Linux laptop you're lost in the sauce. And honestly if you think ChromeOS isn't used in professional settings then you really have no business attempting to suggest a ChromeOS alternative for what is usually the largest Tech Departments, in terms of number of end users, in the majority of Cities and Counties across the U.S.
As a former larger school district sysadmin all I’m going to say is Fuccckkkkk Surface products. The repair ability of surface devices (sans Surface Laptops) is so bad it’s basically a throwaway device. We wouldn’t dare switch from ChromeOS to that, not because of the whole Microsoft problem or learning a new ecosystem but just simply because we cannot possibly in-house repair those devices and Microsoft support on surface devices is Asssssssss. I had one bad surface in my life and I spent half a work day with MS Support just to get them to send me a box to ship it in so they could repair it.