Why does Ars insist that this is a Chromebook competitor? I think it shows a blindspot and cultural gap that they appear to be unaware that low-end PCs exist. At Walmart.com right now I can filter for Windows laptops between $200-$399 and get models such as the Lenovo ideapad S145 with a i3-1005G1, or ASUS VivoBook with Ryzen 3 3200U, or the closest competitor to Kano, a HP Stream with the same Celeron and eMMC storage for only $219. They even benchmarked against a Dell 15-3573 but borrowed the performance measurements from Geekbench instead of running the test themselves.
> Think it's a shame that [...] the Chromebook is the "standard" for kids and classrooms.
Chromebooks are cheap to buy and maintain, that's why they are in classrooms.
Whatever the $OS, we don't #teach# privacy. In fact, privacy and critical thinking are the subjects that we teach #worse# than math.
Although Chromebooks are GOOGware, you can make them better by switching to dev mode and installing SeaBIOS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaBIOS). I boot Debian Linux on a CB with premium hardware. Cheapest "ultrabook" that you get, and with Firefox DoH and ESNI, you bleed less into the surveillance system.
The openness of Windows is why it’s not suitable for school environments or even many professional environments. ChromeOS is hard to break, and even if you did, it’s a 5 minute process to restore it to a workable state.
With that said, I hope that future tinkerers find a way to get their hands on Windows or Mac computers at home or in computer literacy labs.
