It's interesting that they did this with laptops.<p>The SF Bay Area has OTX West[1], which takes broken desktop computers and swaps parts to make a smaller number of working computers, which they then distribute to schools. Their new, modernized, mobile-friendly no-useful-information site doesn't tell you much, but last year's site has a useful FAQ.[2] As of 2015, they provided Windows 7 desktops with LibreOffice. They have a deal with Microsoft which allows them to do OEM installs of Windows on old Windows computers.<p>If you have old computers to unload, send them to OTX West in Oakland.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.otxwest.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.otxwest.org</a>
[2] <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150226174001/http://www.otxwest.org/faq.html" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20150226174001/http://www.otxwes...</a>
I actually mentor at one of the schools mentioned in the article (Academy for Software Engineering in Manhattan). Really cool to see it featured here since they incorporate CS into their curriculum throughout all four years of high-school. If you're in the NYC area I would encourage you to check out iMentor and get involved with the school... They're always looking for more mentors!
I have an old netbook that came with Windows but runs Lubuntu now. Why the excitement about Chrome OS compared to other resource-light Linux distros? I can run Chromium on Lubuntu, so doesn't that give me access to all the Chrome OS software plus a bunch of other Linux software too?<p>I don't understand why Chrome OS is considered to be something revolutionary.
So are they basically just replacing windows with linux on a bunch of these laptops?<p>It seems like that is where the biggest success came from: a linux install with a lightweight DE.
They could do this for free by running Puppy Linux. I use it daily on my 10-year old laptop. It's Ubuntu-based and runs completely from RAM. My hard drive inside this laptop is dead but it takes about 18 seconds to boot from a USB2 flash drive.
Inspiring story...<p>This is an excellent example of a startup finding a niche, with the added bonus of providing a much-needed benefit to society...<p>Win/Win...kudos to Neverware!<p>Think I'll pull a couple of old Dell laptops out of my closet and rig them up to give away to a couple of kids I know...
This is all great in theory but real-world application is so painful and does not scale if it is anything more than a literal set it and forget it deployment. I currently work in K12 and have looked into CloudReady for the last 3-4 months. We abandoned it mainly because deployment was unbearable if imaging or running around with a dozen USB sticks. If you choose to go the managed device route you pay twice, once for the Neverware license which can be transferred to another laptop if the original dies and once for a Google console license which is non-transferable (for the type of license we typically purchase). We are currently working on rolling our own district specific Chromium deployment full with managed updates.<p>If you take away the money factor the sheer frustration of having to keep polishing turds and putting 6-8 year old hardware out there can be overwhelming whether it's as light as Chromium or still a bloated Windows image that takes 3 hours to deploy with all the hacky crap that has to happen to run outdated software. Keys come off, laptops get dropped, motherboards get fried from being on & closed in a laptop cart for 5 years and first-gen mSata SSD's fail. And then to do this with a staff of 6-10 people with varying skills for thousands and thousands of devices in some cases.<p>Better off biting the bullet and buying proper Chromebooks for ~$300 and be done with it. Windows is done in education as a standard. Lab environment, sure. Office 365 will fill the role for learning the "essential" Office suite. The kids are ready to move on. It's the adults making the curriculum and trying to teach it that can't get beyond what they already know.
It seems weird to me that Google isn't distributing ChromeOS as an installable OS. Isn't their goal to get everyone using Chrome, not to sell ChromeOS hardware?
From Linux you unpack the .bin file and dd it to a USB stick.<p><a href="https://neverware.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/213346247-Create-an-Installer-USB-on-Linux" rel="nofollow">https://neverware.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/213346247-Cr...</a><p>Might have a play on the old Thinkpad X60. Wish them well with the pricing model!
I installed Chromium OS on my mom's old notebook. It's actually nice, works very smoothly, practically everything out of the box and there are no bloated settings, applications etc. to confuse her, she doesn't need more than Gmail, Google and Google Hangouts anyway.
Interesting to see how Neverware has changed over the years. If I remember correctly their V2 product was about replacing old computers/laptops with virtual machines running in the cloud. They have a new solution but they're still solving the same problem.