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Kids are short-circuiting their school-issued Chromebooks for TikTok clout (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 56 points 1 year ago* (9 children)

I wish we lived in a world where they're doing it because they don't want locked-down toys issued by an evil corporation. But of course that's not the reason.

P.S. proprietary software should be illegal in education. Full stop.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    I suppose the question would be the alternative.

    Note the devices actively discouraging offline save is a huge asset to schools, since kids screw up a lot, forget their devices and need loaners to get through a day and such. Extra bonus if the device can't be too fun, to avoid them being overly used at home and get broken more.So Chromebook is desirable because they suck so much.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    I was thinking of buying a Chromebook for travelling cause it's cheap. I was very close to buying one, but someone told me about the world of used ThinkPads. I ended up buying a used ThinkPad with an AMD R7 4750U and I am so glad I did. It can run literally every game I want lol

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    It depends on your use case. A same cost Chromebook would be much lighter, faster with the things it can do, and over ten hour battery life. As always, a lot depends on cost: a school districts bulk $50 buy will always be horrible but you can get a much nicer “high end” Chromebook for a couple hundred

    I don’t game much and considered a Chromebook for basic travel use, but went with a tablet.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    faster with the things it can do

    What do you mean by this? Surely you don't mean actual performance, right?

    I don't game a ton but having the performance to be able to do so is really nice IMO. The battery life is great as well (like 6+ hours depending on what you do etc), and being able to put any OS I want on it is huge too. I also like how durable it is too.

    I feel like if I got a tablet, I'd want a keyboard, and then a mouse too. That'd still be best for portability though, most likely, but it's kind of nice having a full laptop experience.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Actually I do. The thing is a Chromebook can’t really do things you normally associate with performance, like gaming. However I’ve found decent ones to have a snappier ui than low to medium windows laptops

    That’s the thing with a tablet: what’s your use case?

    I’m not a fan of the keyboard and mice: they work well enough but now you have a bunch of pieces to keep track of and you need a table or desk. If I need a keyboard I prefer a laptop/chromebook form factor because it’s just one piece to deal with and you can use it on your lap

    I realized that I spend way too much time e consuming media, but with light typing, such as this reply. a tablet is great and I’m perfectly happy writing on screen. Actually I’m on my phone at the moment. I do use my phone for most things, so maybe I think of the tablet as a larger phone screen for times I don’t need to be as portable

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    ThinkPads generally aren't low to medium Windows laptops though, they're literally several thousand dollar machines. It's just they age incredibly well, so they end up on the used market at a heavily discounted price after a while. I'd be surprised if a Chromebook outperformed a ThinkPad when it comes to actual performance.

    Yeah that's a good point about keyboard and mice, that's kind of why I like having an actual standalone laptop. For me I feel like a tablet isn't as portable as a phone, but it's also not as useful as a standalone laptop, so it's kind of hard for me to find a use case for it.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    That's why I bought a fold, not a Samsung fan but I didn't want to buy a separate tablet and I really like the sweet spot this phone offers.

    99% of the time I'm just using the front screen, but when I want or need that extra real estate (gaming, admining my homelab remotely, partially watching a yt video while doing chores) it's really nice that it's the same device and I can continue exactly what I'm doing on a bigger screen.

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