Chromebook Chargers (HP, Samsung, and Dell)

Again with the Chromebook posts, right?  There are tons of reviews out there.  But you can only rehash the same specs so many times.  In the K-12 market I need to know about the physical properties of the devices too.  Let's face it, these things are going to take some abuse.  What takes more abuse than the power connector?  The charger is going to be plugged up every day, it's got to be tough.

My first experience with a Chromebook was the Samsung Chromebook.  No model number, just the Chromebook.  That was the first ARM based one that was priced at $249.  My thoughts initial thoughts were wow, it's light, it's thin, maybe a little flimsy, but what's with that crazy small charger connector.  Really, is this a Nokia phone from 2008?  In saying that, I still love that particular model.  I was just worried about unleashing a hoard of students on that small connector.  The teachers haven't had an issue with it, but I feared the students.  I've seen what they were capable of with much more robust connectors.

Then I came across the HP Chromebook 11.  Not as thin or light, but not as flimsy either.  So how did that charger connector stack up?  It's micro-usb.  That's great, right?  I really thought it was.  It's micro-usb! Most of these kids are used to plugging these up with their cell phones.  My toddler can plug up a micro-usb connector.  Not to mention that micro-usb chargers are everywhere which should have been a huge advantage (but it's not, just Google it for the details, the short version is that cell charger doesn't provide enough juice, Chromebook battery will die while trying use and charge at same time).

All micro usb connectors are not the same.  The HP Chromebook 11 appears to have a micro-a usb socket.  What is that you ask?  It's almost just like the ubiquitous micro-usb connector.  In fact, the micro-b usb connector that you're used to works in a micro-a socket.  The big difference is that that micro-a connector is a rectangle, it doesn't have the "clipped" corners that make the micro-b connector look kind of like a trapezoid.  Here's a link to the USB Wikipedia article, they cover it better than I do and they have pictures, too.

What does the different connector mean to you? It means the socket doesn't have an obvious up side (or downside).  I know I'm guilty of blindly trying to plug a cable in, doesn't fit, flip it and try it again.  With the more common micro-b connector this isn't a problem.  The metal casing on the connector will only fit one way so if it doesn't fit, it just doesn't fit.  But the HP Chromebook 11 doesn't have a micro-b socket, it's got a micro-a socket.  This means that the metal casing will fit either way.  The only thing stopping it from going in upside down is the thin little plastic strip that holds the metal contacts.  Do you see the problem with this?

So enough about the Chromebook 11, how about the Chromebook 14?  It doesn't have the same problem as the 11.  It's got a more standard barrel connector.  It seems fairly robust.  I haven't spent much time with this one so I don't have a lot more to say about it.

Now let's get to the latest Chromebook that I've tried out.  The Dell Chromebook 11. I got it out of the box and was thrilled to see the standard Dell barrel connector.  The power adapter is a 65W adapter.  It's got rounded corners and doesn't look like the other Dell power bricks that I'm familiar with, but the business end is the same.  It even has the light up ring where the cord goes into the back side of the barrel connector.  I checked it out, it looked pretty cool.  But I didn't plug it up.  Right there on my desk was another Dell power adapter from another Dell laptop (not a Chromebook), I picked it up, plugged it in and.... It blew up.  Wait, no it didn't.  It just worked.

So there we go, the Dell Chromebook 11 has a nice big, fat, rugged power connector.  And it's not unique, it's a Dell connector.   There's a thriving market for Dell laptop chargers.  Try finding an after market HP Chromebook 11 charger (which isn't the same as a HP Chromebook 14).  Heck, try to find an OEM adapter for that matter.  The HP is always out of stock.  Good luck finding a replacement if your dog eats homework, er.... Chromebook charger.

VDI and Chromebooks

VDI, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, right? In the K-12 market it hasn't made a whole lot of sense.  There are some good use cases for it (customized lab environments anyone?), but the cost of maintaining it hasn't made sense.  The dollar cost and the manpower cost, too.  Traditionally, school technology departments have been understaffed.

VDI falls into the category of nice to have, but not very feasible to implement.  The obvious problem is cost.  You want me to deploy $300+ thin clients?  Wait, I'm getting fully functional refurbished computers for $300 or $500 (depends on the model).  Ok, so just deploy those desktops and then use them as clients.  That would work... Except now we're maintaining a bunch of desktops and a bunch of virtual machines.  Remember what I said about the manpower cost?  We're already under staffed as it is, who's going to keep all of those machines up and running?

That's where the Chromebooks come into play.   They can be had for less than $300, which makes them cheaper than thin clients.  And those are even portable in a laptop form factor too.  How about desktops?  That hasn't been as cheap until just recently (see my post here http://practicalschooltech.blogspot.com/2014/02/an-affordable-chromebox-finally.html).  Combine that $179 Chromebox with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and now you've got a full thin client for around $300 too.

You might be wondering now, what's the big deal.  Now you've got to maintain all of those Chrome devices and the VDI.  Chrome devices don't have that much administrative overhead.  They patch themselves, there's no software to install, and a reboot fixes most problem.  Still got problems?  Swap one Chrome device for another, all the users stuff follows their login so it's seamless to them, and work on the malfunctioning device on your own schedule.  The users are happy and the tech staff is happy too.

This sounds good in theory, but how feasible is it, and how well does it work in practice?  I agree with the theory and in practice I don't know, because I haven't tried it yet.  But the feasible-ness has been a real question wondering around in my mind.  Sure, there were remote clients available for the Chrome devices, but no body had a whole package put together to build VDI and use a Chrome device as a client.  Was I missing something?  Was it just so obvious nobody had done it?  Was it not possible?  Did it just not work very well?

Since I don't have any VDI infrastructure in place I couldn't really test how well it worked in practice.  I've remoted hundreds of machines from my Chromebook, using both VNC and RDP.  I haven't had any problems there, but I'm not a typical end user.  I know the addresses of the machines that I'm connecting to and I'm so used to minor hiccups my mind just glosses right over them and I don't even notice them anymore.  With out actually having all the pieces to try it myself I needed to see someone else doing it, or at least trying it.

That's when I stumbled upon Citrix's VDI-in-a-Box setup.  Specifically, their HTML5 Receiver (which ironically, specifically targeted Chrome at first but now they've switched to HTML5).  Here's a post from Citrix themselves talking about it, http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/12/05/new-in-vdi-in-a-box-5-4-built-in-html5-receiver/, and check it out.  The first use case they mention is "schools", in fact that's the opening word of the post.  Exactly what I was looking for, somebody that was trying to put the pieces together.  Now I've just got to get my hands on a demo copy of the VDI-in-a-Box so I can try it out and see how it works.

Anybody out there had any experience with this yet?

An affordable Chromebox.... Finally

I really like the idea of ChromeOS devices for school use.  Think about it, automatic updating, very narrow attack vector, fast boot, plain and simple operation.  What's not to like about it? Ok ok I understand, everything has to be web-based.  But is that so bad?  Really, how often is your connection to the internet down?  I know lots of people talk about how good the cloud is and a lot of people preach about how bad the cloud is.  Wait a minute, I'm getting side tracked, I'll save this topic for another post, let's move on to what I was wanting to talk about.

Chromeboxes.  More importantly, affordable Chromeboxes.  Asus has announced a new Chromebox starting at $179 (really, read about it here http://www.asus.com/us/News/xjbJtLA1HEyUSUeo).  That's pretty cheap, right?  But you might be saying the Samsung Chromeboxes for $300 or $500 were affordable too.  Yes, they were affordable, until you consider that you can buy a refurbished computer for $500 (with a monitor.)  That's a full PC too, it runs Windows and everything.  Chrome versus Windows is going to be another post.

Back to the affordable Chromeboxes, in education every dollar counts, $179 is much more affordable than $300.  That's a lot more computers being made available for the students.  I'll call that a win.

Now for my rant.

Chromeboxes have been out for some time.  Just a small computer that runs ChromeOS, nothing particularly special.  The prices have been ridiculously high though.  Before today's announcement they were around $300 dollars.  That doesn't sound too bad for a computer.  But, Samsung has a whole Chromebook for $249.  Some might point out that that's obviously different because it's an ARM processor and the Chromeboxes all have Intel processors.  I could care less about that.  I need a computer that runs, the ARM based Chromebooks do that just fine.  Why not strip out the portable bits of a Chromebook and squeeze them into a super small package?  How much could you save if you cut off the screen, battery, keyboard and trackpad?

Troubleshooting Google Chromebook Policies

Using Google Apps to manage policies Chromebook Policies?  Want to know what settings are applied to a device (or user) and when they were last updated?  Then I have found your new best friend, chrome://policy/, just load it up and take a look at what policies are getting applied.

chome://policy

The key pieces of information that I used were the "Last fetched" and "Applies to".

Another handy item listed there is the "Reload policies" button.  It comes in real handy for testing how changes affect the operation of the system.

Now I just have to go check out what this looks like on a Windows system running Chrome.