I’d argue that they can still learn typing, researching, google docs (which, lets be honest, are close enough to microsoft, open or libre office to count), navigating the web, learning how to detect scams, AI and things like that… even on a Chromebook.

That said, my kid is about to go to college and hasn’t used a chromebook since 6th grade. I don’t currently know anyone whose kid has either. They’re just not used for schools much anymore. Their huge selling point was simplifying the OS support and battery life, but her current Lenovo lasts all day already as do most normal laptops at this point and GPO’s and AD are a things.

Nah, her kind of deep seated hatred comes from required usage over time, not from a weekend. Short term exposure just doesn’t do it.

Not sure if joking/trolling, but school computers don’t generally ALLOW social media or chat apps like Discord and such, as well as harshly limit internet usage with guardrails. They’re pretty locked down and even when at home monitor network usage.

I don’t like laptops and such in schools, but kids ARE going to need to know how to use them to be successful and that’s something a lot of parents can’t teach.

When I was growing up, we had to learn how to type, how to use the Dewey Decimal System and library terminals to look up where books were for research and such. Later, we had Computer Labs to do this work and write reports and such… This is no different. Don’t confuse a smartphone internet experience and its constant advertising and social aspects with what kids get on these laptops.

There’s some benefit… my daughter was assigned a Window 11 Lenovo the last two tears and now hates Microsoft AND Windows.

Her personal laptop runs linux.

They were just layoffs in disguise, so they wont be back for a while.

It was definitely worth it for the $40 I paid a long time ago. I used it a little longer than desired because Jellyfin’s DVR support wasn’t always there. It is now and i haven’t used Plex in over a year.

IMHO, Jellyfin needs a bit better UI, but Plex is actively making theirs worse, so…

At the moment it’s in a box, but still functional last I checked. Did pretty well for itself, especially since I had it overclocked most of its life.

I was building them about every 18mo to 2yrs and then stopped noticing any good reason to built my C2D in 2006 upgraded to an i5 6600K when I needed the C2D for a server in 2015 and finally built my current 7950X3D in 2023 so I could use the 6600K as a HTPC/couch gaming rig. I’ll be good for a while now. I guess I’ll start thinking about it in 2030.

Did they, or anyone else think that wouldn’t happen?