SPM

Sorry, I should have said "all laptops sampled". NPD reported that out of US business to businesses resellers who sold a total of 14 million devices (laptops, desktops, tablets) in 2013 (not all but about a third of the total US market) and 21% of laptops sold and 9.6% of devices sold were Chromebooks compared to Windows which made up 34% of the laptops sold. I am pretty astounded that 21% of business to business laptop sales were Chromebooks - I would have expected consumer laptops to perhaps be around this amount based on Currys PC World's reports last year that 10% of their computer sales were Chromebooks, but I was surprised about business to business sales figures. What is not included in this number is direct OEM sales (as in Dell direct, Google Play store, Apple Store), nor any consumer sales (through outlets like Amazon online sales Best Buy and Staples retail sales etc). The mistake you and some others are making is to assume that consumer sales and direct sales of Chromebooks are zero. It is not zero, and the numbers there will be significant too. The other mistake people make is to look at web counter stats and equate them with sales. They are actually measuring two completely different things - the first is the number of existing users (and web stats can also show considerable bias), and the second is the number of newly sold devices. In other words total number of Chromebooks sold in US is greater than 14 million x 9.6% you estimated since Amazon online sales Best Buy and Staples retail sales etc. sold more than zero chromebooks. The numbers sold to consumers is not published, but I would suspect they are significant and somewhat similar to those sold by the business to business resellers since Chromebooks are essentially for casual users. Indeed I was surprised by the numbers apparently sold to businesses. I can only surmise that businesses are using them as thin clients. The other mistake you and others are making is to call world sales of Chromebooks low and suggest it is struggling. World sales are low because Chromebooks have only been marketed in US and UK, and only very recently have shipments to 6 more countries started. On top of that, even in the US and UK, availability in retail stores has been limited for most of the year, so effectively what we have had is test marketing of Chromebooks by Google. If Chromebooks can score 21% of business to business laptops sales, and possibly a similar number in consumer sales with limited retail availability and low key advertising, then I wouldn't say Chromebooks are struggling. It certainly has done that - all the main PC OEMs are now making custom designed Chromebooks - Acer, HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, Samsung, LG, Asus, and even Dell which has been given a $1 billion loan by Microsoft, presumably to push Windows and presumably with strings attached. HP and others are also experimenting with Android PCs, and dual Android/Windows devices, and all are getting into ARM based Android tablets. I concur with this, and when they need to buy an additional or new device, they keep the Windows machine, and buy a new tablet or Chromebook instead. Why throw away your old machine if it still works, and especially if you prefer them to the new Windows machines on offer with Windows 8 on them.

Not to be outdone, Windows 8 has its Mattel/Fischer Price UI.

I think NPD are talking about sales to businesses. Overall Windows sales dropped by 10% over 2012 as many other sites have reported.

21% of all laptops is pretty impressive compared to Windows' 34.1% of laptops, all achieved in a year. It is easy to see why Microsoft was spooked into launching its recent Scroogled attacks on Chromebooks. This isn't all Chromebooks sold mind you - just the percentages sold by US business to business resellers out of a sample of 14 million devices - which represents about a third of the US market. I think this must exclude educational specialist VARs who sell most of the Chromebooks and Apple Macs sold to schools, otherwise a 1.8% for Apple who have a big share of US school computers, and 0.2% for Chromebooks at the end of 2012 rising to 9.6% of all devices in Nov 2013 makes no sense, because Chromebooks had made inroads into the school market before end of 2012, and sales have been steadily increasing since rather than the 50 times increase shown. This means the sales in the 14 million sales sample are mostly to businesses rather than schools.

I am not sure about how IDC got their figures, but IDG are often unreliable and little more than crystal gazing. It should also be noted that until very recently, Chromebooks were only on sale in the US and UK, and even after expanding sales to 6 more countries late last year, availability outside US and UK is very limited. As far as worldwide sales are concerned, IDG's 1% of 360 million is 3.6 million, almost all of which are in the US and UK. NPD has some accurate sales figures based on data about 14 million laptops, desktops, and tablets sold through US "commercial channels" which they define as "business to business sales" ie. resellers/VARS like CDW and Ingram Micro that sell direct to businesses, government and education, in which they say Chromebooks made up 21% of all laptops sold and 9.6% of all tablets, laptops, and desktops sold. It does not count sales via channel sales like Amazon online, or Best Buy or Staples retail outlets or direct sales from OEMs like Apple Stores, Dell Direct or Google Play. The 14 million number of devices counted represents about a third of the US market. Chromebook sales growth: 2013 saw huge growth in business market | BGR There ie one thing that is strange about the figures - Apple has a very low representation of 1.8%, and Chromebooks before 2013 accounted for only 0.02% of sales, which seems to indicate that those selling supply and support services or supply and maintenance services as a package (which is most Apple and Chromebook sales to schools) aren't included, since both should have a very much higher representation based on their success in sales to schools before 2013. Basically this seems to be mainly business and government sales, which is damned impressive. Presumably they are being used as thin clients to access web based info services on servers.

I am not sure about the market size for these things, but it is a nice machine for those contracts to supply, libraries, public info systems, info workers, and government/large businesses with server based info-systems. A real competitive advantage too and a profit multiplier over Windows for those applications given the plug-in and walk away zero maintenance nature of these devices, and the fact that you can maintain 10-30 times the number that you can Windows machines with the same time and staffing levels, and the fact that Zero Touch Administration means you don't ever need to physically touch or log into one of these devices. That's a real force multiplier.

Google's play with Chrome is fundamentally different from Netscapes' OS in a browser concept. Microsoft saw Netscape as a threat to their existence which they had to eliminate because Netscape plug-ins allowed a means of running full blown (local) applications portable to any OS on which you could install Netscape on, without the application being tied to the Windows operating system. At a time before Windows 95 had established itself, had Microsoft not acted, Netscape plug-in apps would have blunted Microsoft's drive to gain its desktop app environment monopoly. Chrome is similar, but the difference is that it offers Native Client (which will become Portable Native Client this summer) for running C, C++, and C# code compiled into machine code locally. Unlike Native Client or Netscape Plug-ins which is just a way of running local apps in Netscape, the Portable Native Client technology is open and fully portable between any device regardless of CPU architecture, which is important for unifying the PC and non PC clients. The CPU independence will potentially make it a W3C standard candidate, unlike Netscape plug-ins but there is a lot of resistance to additions to the HTML standards by vested interests who keep blocking them, which is why video and audio standardization in HTML5 took so long. It is likely that Portable Native client will be a similar case with regard to HTML5 adoption for the same reason. Nevertheless with the addition of PNaCl and Google's spec for packaged offline apps, Chrome browser is a full OS in itself, capable of doing anything and everything that Windows can do. The big difference between Chrome and Netscape browsers is that where Netscape's plug-in environment was an OS in a browser which allowed local apps to be run on any OS supported by Netscape browsers, Chrome allows those apps to be fully portable via the cloud, and between different CPU architectures - even in the case of locally running code or offline apps. Where local data or code is required to be stored on the local device, it is stored in the cloud and cached locally, so that it is portable across the cloud. HTML5 is another big difference. Your comment about a document format was true of earlier versions of HTML, but not for HTML5 which is an asynchronous display format, not a static document format. It works exactly like your Windows desktop windowing environment, where individual elements in a window can be updated and can generate keyboard and mouse events, just like on Windows apps. Again, an HTML5 window can do anything and everything a Windows application can do and just as efficiently. The main difference is that Chrome web apps sync everything to the cloud automatically and only cache locally. It is not like the the old HTML markup language at all where you have to refresh the whole page to update any changed part of it. Basically HTML5 is like a universal, standardised windowing system that runs on every device conceivable. It will lead to a very rapid proliferation of web apps once it is formally ratified in 2014, although most of the pieces are in place now. Regarding Portable Native Client apps, I think it will be very important, but mainly for the use it allows of the huge range of C, C++, and C# code in existing libraries rather than speed. Rather having to recode it into server code and Javascript for the local side of the client server app, you can re-use these directly. You will also see applications requiring speed use it as well - mainly games, video/audio/photo editing, codec processing, 3D Cad etc. In particular I think you will see a lot of legacy C, C++ coded PC games jump to Native Client. I agree with you about not being able to protect against the host OS's vulnerabilities, which is why it is probably better to use a Chromebook to run Chrome on, and if you need Windows at all, to virtualise it on a Windows terminal server and access it via a Chromebook. Indeed if you want the highest level of security with Windows desktop use, that is achieved by putting Windows on a Terminal server, blocking off all access to it other than https via Ericom Access Now, and not allowing download of files from it other than in a tightly restricted manner. Once files are downloaded to a PC or laptop, it is very difficult to secure them. Not allowing it off your server and requiring users to log in and use the https interface to run apps and other desktop tasks on the secure server, and using a secure web client like a Chromebook which doesn't store data locally (except encrypted local temporary caches if not disabled), it the most secure way to do Windows computing.

I think that in the Chinese government hacking case, it wasn't Google's servers that were compromised. Rather it was individual user passwords that were intercepted by the Chinese government - probably by hacking a client device and using a key logger to obtain the passwords. Google to its credit pulled out of China to protect its users, while Microsoft did the opposite to try to take advantage of the vacuum created by Google pulling out by cosying up with the Chinese government.

Your comments attacking Google on privacy, are rather hypocritical to say the least. One thing Google does not do is sell private or any other kinds of information to third parties - all Google does with any information it may come across is the dastardly crime of occasionally targeting an advert at the user based on possible things that may be of interest to them. It makes no sense whatsoever for Google to sell any information on to others - after all Google makes its revenue from advertising, and if Google sells its information on, then it undermines its own business. The same is not true of Facebook or Microsoft, who do not have the same means of generating revenue from advertising internally, and for whom it makes sense to sell on personal information for profit - and it is these types of businesses that do sell on personal information. When information is held internally, then the terms of use can be held to account legally. When it is sold on, then there is absolutely no control over what happens to it nor any jurisdiction that the data can be confined to. Interestingly, while Google resists state requests for information where unenforceable, and even pulled out of China to protect its users against government intrusion into private and personal information, Microsoft seems to be to giving away personal information to governments when asked in most cases - and not just the US government, after all they want to sell Windows and Bing in Sudan, China, and other locations. This article says Microsoft provided personal information on 80% of government request worldwide. Microsoft discloses requests from law enforcement agenies worldwide - Business - The Boston Globe The privacy issue is a current FUD push by Microsoft to try to stifle Google's rapid ascendancy in education. Student Privacy Should Not Be for Sale - Microsoft on the Issues - Site Home - TechNet Blogs However it is complete and total hypocrisy. Unlike Google which does not sell private, personal or other data onto others, that is exactly what the Gates Foundation is doing with student personal data it has collected - in partnership with Rupert Murdoch, that other paragon of virtue when it comes to privacy issues. K-12 student database jazzes tech startups, spooks parents | Reuters

I don't think this number is accurate. 1% of the market, which I think is from web usage statistics certainly is a lot more than 500,000. The figures come from a dodgy Taiwanese website called Digitimes which appears to be running an anti-Chromebook PR campaign with Microsoft's PR department. Digitimes cooks up some low Chromebook sales figures without any facts to back it up, and then it appears quoted by lots of other sites within a very short time as fact - seemingly PR guys (I can guess who) have pushed out to a lot of websites in a very short period of time. The 500,000 number looks like Acer's C7 sales over the last 4 months based on 5% of the notebooks Acer has sold. Acer says 5-10% which I taker to mean it started at 5% of Acers notebook sales when supply was limited and increased now to 10%. This figure excludes Samsung Chromebook retail sales which are much higher, given that it is number 1 in the Amazon list - above Acer's C7. The Acer sales, the Samsung Amazon and Curry's sales all exclude business sales and educational sales which is the major target for Chromebooks. This is business and education sales are made directly to the end user rather than through Amazon, PC World or other retail outlets. Acer's C7 is pretty useless for education because of its short battery life, so Acers current total sale numbers don't include education. Currys/PC World also announced that Chromebooks account for 10% of all their computer sales in UK currently - that is without advertising, and without the most popular Chromebook models and staff who know anything about it being available at most stores, which is amazing. I think the real sales figures would be higher than 1.5 million in the last 100 days given all this. in July 2011 Digitimes claimed that only 20,000-30,000 of the first version of the Chromebook had been sold in 2011. In that case, Digitimes seems to have reported the 25,000 Acer Chromebooks Acer sold in the first two weeks of availability after its delayed entry as the total number of Chromebooks sold in 2011. Again it was widely syndicated widely to other websites in a very short time. Again in summer 2012 it was claimed 300,000 Chromebooks had been sold. How was this number arrived at? Take Digitimes figure of 25,000 sold by Acer in the first two weeks of limited supply, assume that was for a month ignoring the fact that it shipped two weeks late, ignore Samsung sales which were greater and had been taking place for some time before Acer had started shipping, and ignore the education market sales which was the main sales push at the time, and multiply it by 12 for 12 months. Voila you have 300,000. Now it is claimed that despite a big price drop and reported 700% increase in Chromebook sales based on web browser ID string tracking, Chromebooks are actually selling slower with only 500,000 sold over the last two years. The figures simply don't add up! This latest Digitimes "report" looks like a repeat of the "independent" report plus PR push strategy being played by a rival who stands to lose market share if the Chromebook takes off - presumably in an attempt to prevent more OEMs and developers from jumping on the Chromebook bandwagon.

It may be better to try contacting Google again as well because c-learning looks like a Chromebook training rather than a provisioning/management service.

I can't afford it either. I would say it is a reference device to demo future technologies to allow OEMs to develop cheaper mass market designs, Chrome Web Apps developers to develop high end Native Client Chrome apps like games, and early adopters to try it out. Although they haven't really taken off yet, high res screens and touchscreens, will become more common, and Portable Native Client is due to be ready this summer - hence the i5 CPU. I would expect the features to appear on different devices in different combinations.

Google is giving it away because they know full well you aren't going to use up anything like that amount in reality. It is a psychological crutch for Windows users who are used to Windows filling up whatever size of hard drive you may have with rubbish within a year or two.

Sysadmins spend a lot of time limiting and locking down things for security and simplicity/ease of use and maintenance. Less flexible is a good thing for everybody other than computer hobbyists, provided it does the things you need it to do, and does it in an efficient and convenient way. You can also run Windows or OSX or Linux apps on them for the occasions when you need to - when I say run, I mean run them the same way Chromebooks run all apps - on a LAN or Cloud server (in this case a Windows terminal server or Linux or Mac server). Chrome OS devices are brilliant for useage where these requirements are met - they are Zero Maintenance, Zero Touch Management (ie. no admin has to ever log in or touch Chromebook/box devices), with sub 10 second boot, instant pause/resume when you open and shut the lid, and all your data and apps can be accessed on any device with a web browser (try doing that with Windows or Macbooks data or apps). They are secure managed networked computers out of the box, and don't need any server hardware or maintenance spend to achieve all this because they use Google's and ASP providers' Cloud servers to achieve this, although you can add your own if you want. They are 10% of Currys/PC World's total computer sales right now, and this will only increase. They will be everywhere within a couple of years.

The main benefit of USB 3.0 on a laptop like the ARM based Samsung Chromebook Series 3 is that you can use it to charge the Chromebook as well as power other devices - however there probably be too much power draw from the Pixel to charge it up via USB. The speed advantage of USB 3.0 isn't particularly useful on a device that uses local storage only for downloads.

You can try contacting Google and ask them whether there are Google partners for education that they can put you in contact with for the web management console. Chromebook management console Contact the Chrome for Education Sales Team I doubt if anyone would be interested in managing a single Chromebook though, but they could explain it to you and probably demo it, and support a trial. The Chromebooks you buy in retail are individual devices which aren't set up for management via the web management console (which works with a particular Google Apps for Domains domain). You normally have buy Chromebooks direct from Google or from a Google partner to get Chromebooks which are set up for domain management with the web management console, although I believe you can reconfigure them to do so. This has to do with security, since you don't want somebody out there on the Internet "managing" your Chromebook without your consent. Google don't seem to have gotten up to speed yet with Chromebooks for Education yet in UK as they have in the US.

I gave my dad who is now 85 a Linux EeePC netbook about 5 years ago. He still uses it, and shuns the new Windows laptop my brother got for him last year. It has a reset to factory settings feature, so pretty well nothing can mess it up. The only downside is that recently his eyesight has been getting worse.

I would really love to see something like this to encourage Chromebooks as a web based gaming platform, for CAD (AutoCAD has for example AutoCAD WS which runs reasonably well on a Chromebook), video editing etc. In theory using WebGL, Native Client etc. ChromeOS should be able to run reasonably high end games, CAD and video/sound editing. The only thing that stops such apps being developed is because only low end hardware is available for them to run on.

I don't think low cost in itself is the reason why netbooks were discontinued. My take on this is that Microsoft never really wanted netbooks, and the reason why it licensed Windows for netbooks was in order to prevent Linux from getting a toehold in the PC/laptop market. Microsoft's fear was that because customers actually liked Linux netbooks, there was a danger that customers would become familiar with Linux on the desktop, and Linux would take over a large chunk of the desktop market if customers were allowed to experience Linux preloaded PCs/laptops. Microsoft had to eliminate Linux as a competitor for PC space, and it did this by providing subsidies to OEMs to not sell/preload Linux. Microsoft did this by subsidising OEMs for not selling/preloading Linux - Linux may be free, which is quite cheap, but paying someone not to sell Linux is even cheaper. Microsoft offered advertising subsidies to OEMs for advertising Windows, but I suspect conditions attached to OEM contracts would mean that OEMs would lose this advertising subsidy if they advertised Linux netbooks - possibly including shop front advertising. Which is I suspect why OEMs at first shifted Linux netbooks to online sales even though they were selling well. The second thing Microsoft did was to subsidise Windows for netbooks to make preloaded Linux netbooks unviable for the OEMs. The thing about a subsidy though is that you have to get the money to pay for it from somewhere, and this would have to come from the Microsoft tax levied on other Microsoft users. Of course this would need to be done in a way so as not to undercut revenue from those other Windows users who are paying for the subsidies. I believe this is where the arbitary limits imposed by Microsoft on the number of processes that could run on the crippled Windows OS on netbooks and arbitary hardware restrictions on netbooks like CPU, screen size etc. comes in - they were there to prevent the subsidised Windows netbooks from cannibalising higher priced Windows devices which were required to be charged at a slightly higher licensing cost than otherwise to pay for anti-competitive subsidies to keep them from preloading Linux. In the end these measures to prevent Linux from getting a foothold were successful in eliminating Linux from getting a foothold in preloaded PC/laptop market, and keeping it out. The reason why OEMs are dropping netbooks now is I suspect because Microsoft has now cut these subsidies for netbooks. Why would they do that? Simple - look at the sub $899 x86 based Windows 8 Pro tablets (ie. the non-ultrabook Windows 8 tablets). They cost between $500 and $650, are powered by dual core Atom Clover Trail CPUs, and have pathetic GPUs and 10" screens and 1-2GB RAM and 64GB SDD. In other words they are low end netbooks with touch added and the keyboard taken away, retailing for $500+. If OEMs are selling $279 Windows netbooks with the same specs with a 320GB HDD, then who on earth would pay $500 for the Windows 8 Atom netbook tablets? That is why Microsoft killed off netbooks now, just when Windows 8 Pro tablets were about to launch. Google has actually brought in the new cheap Chromebooks for the mass market at the perfect time. The 1.1 GHz $199 Celeron processor in the Acer C7 Chromebook and its HD2000 GPU are at least twice as fast as Microsoft's $500-$600 tablets, and don't tell me that you don't need that speed to run typical tablet apps - because there are few Metro apps, and the only reason to buy a Windows tablet over an Android or iOS tablet is to run Windows apps. Windows apps running on hardware of low end netbook specs means painfully slow operation - which may be fine if you are paying netbook prices, but not for a $500 device.

I think in UK it is pretty minimal. I don't think there has been a big marketing push by Google so far. Another problem is that teachers in UK are computer ignorant for the most part, and look at computers only as tools to use in computer science classes or to teach for narrow low level technical certificates (eg. Word, Excel and typing skills, or AutoCAD drafting for beginners). In the US in the 1:1 roll-outs, teachers view Chromebooks as a communications and research tool for helping teach all subjects, not just computer science and low level technical skills - much the way that computers are viewed in university and higher education.

Neat. You should be able to create web pages with widgets on Google Sites to do the same sort of thing including file upload, download, sharing, versioning and with access control based on user and groups. You also have access control on Google Apps for Domains to control external access etc. It is worth trying out Google sites, discussion boards, Youtube EDUGoogle hangouts, and some of the other sharing features in Google. There is nothing there can't do with local servers local applications etc. equally well - it is just that it is free for education and so damn cheap because you don't have to pay for hardware and maintenance. That's the beauty of Google Apps and other cloud apps - you should be able to use Google Docs and all web apps on any device without installing any local apps (apart from a browser) - perfect for BYOD. Remote access really is a must for higher educational organisations where a BYOD policy is used. Citrix Receiver and Ericom Access Now are HTTP based remote access server side technologies, and so perfect for BYOD as access is possible from any device. There is also the Linux Gtk3+ Broadway display server technology which displays what was originally served in X-Protocol in HTTP. Although not quite complete, when complete, it will allow Linux applications of all kinds including desktop applications to be served directly to the network via HTML5. There is also an online version of LibreOffice that does the same. When these come to fruition they will be a huge boost to BYOD it that it will allow remote access from any device to a number of useful free desktop apps including GIMP, Latex, Inkscape, Open/LibreOffice, PDF Split and Merge etc., various video editors, and a huge base of programming and development tools. gtk+ « Alexander Larsson LibreOffice Online Prototype - YouTube

Chromebooks can't mount local Windows network drives, but they can access local web servers or web based content servers like NAS servers sharing files via HTTP or web based course content or document servers like Moodle, knowledgetree, or Alfresco. However, broadband access is generally very reliable in this country and HTTP for document access is low bandwidth, so you can normally outsource these services to external cloud service providers and save yourself the hassle of maintaining local servers. You can also use web based remote access software (eg. Citrix Receiver or Ericom Access Now) to run Windows applications on a local Windows Terminal Server if necessary. It is also possible to outsource Windows application access (Ericom can provide MS Word and Excel for example), but network bandwidth needs to be checked if this is done over the Internet. However Google Apps for Domains is free for education, provides domain emails, domain user management, domain file sharing with user and group permissions, intranet web pages, discussion groups, Google Docs, spreadsheets, presentations etc. and is effectively a no brainer for anyone deploying Chromebooks. Basically it for educational institutions, it gives you the equivalent of a MS AD domain with the same services all for zero hardware cost, zero maintenance cost, and zero software cost (the hardware is Google's servers and is maintained by Google), so it should be the starting point, and most schools won't generally need anything more. see Products ? Google Apps for Education The Google Apps for domains environment and a web based remote access solution for Windows applications is perfect for BYOD as well, using Windows PCs, Macbooks, or Chromebooks work equally well, since installing the Chrome browser gives all the same access and user experience on all devices. This means you can mix Chromebooks for students with their own Windows, iPad and Macbook BYOD devices and use of their own home computers, and the school's own high end PC workstations in the video or CAD computer lab which can allow students access to all their resources on all devices.

The problem with Windows Phone is that customers don't like it. You can buy good reviews, but paying customers are more difficult to please.

The Lenovo devices are ruggedized to withstand a battering from schoolkids, so fewer breakages will compensate for higher sticker price to some extent, although deploying a replacement Chromebook is a case of unboxing it, setting the WiFi settings and logging in, so replacement cost is the sticker price. It depends on how many breakages you get. I suspect if kids are expected to take them home, they will break a lot more due to them sitting on them or throwing their bags around. The big cost in desktop provisioning is the IT labour cost for provisioning, maintenance and support, and the cost of teacher and student time spent on end user maintenance, wasted time waiting for boot up at the start of each class etc. rather than the sticker price, so the cost of the Lenovo Chromebooks won't be that much higher as a percent of TCO as compared with the Samsung or Acer. With regard to TCO, an IDC study based on real school data from schools that had large scale deployments of Chromebooks found the TCO of Chromebooks to be about 30% of that of Windows laptops because of that - and they were no doubt for the higher prices of the old Series 5 Chromebooks. The study isn't entirely independent because it was paid for by Google, but it does tally with what teachers and admins from schools that have deployed it are saying independently, and the data can be independently judged. http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//intl/en/chrome/assets/education/pdf/IDC-WP-Quantifying.the.Economic.Value.of.Chromebooks.for.K-12.Education-082012.pdf It certainly is in line with my experience (not in schools though). I have a Chromebook and Chromebox, and I can vouch for the fact that they are indeed zero-maintenance devices. They are also zero touch devices - which means an IT person never has to touch or log into a Chromebook device. Again this is correct - Chromebooks can be managed using a simple web console for your Google Apps for Domains for your educational or business domain. For example, you can manage users in groups, have certain groups of apps allocated or denied to certain groups of users etc. and changes to the individual devices/user resources will be automatic. Having transition my previous employer to Google Apps for Domains I can also vouch for the fact that Google Apps for Domains leads to big savings over maintaining a Windows Domain because you do not need any servers locally - no AD server for user authentication, no mailserver, no file and print server. You may want a local Moodle server, but this can be outsourced if required. This means no hardware cost, and very low maintenance cost. The biggest advantage however is that you don't need to be physically present in a school to manage it. You don't need to touch the devices, you don't need any physical hardware in the school except for wireless routers and networking (the installation of which you can subcontract to others), you can use Google Apps for Domains and the web management console for most of the server functionality that is required, and other server functionality can be hosted on a Rackspace or Amazon server. For IT sysadmins this means you can work from home, and you can manage a larger number of schools over a larger area than you can with in the case of Windows or Macbook laptop environments.

iPads are personal devices and aren't really built for centralised management. Getting apps correctly installed and wiping and reinstalling apps with each new year is tedious on an iPad. I think Chromebooks are a much better choice for schools. They are eminently shareable and easily centrally managed. With Chromebooks you could have less than 1:1 deployment if you likes with students sharing Chromebooks, and/or a Chromebook trolley to collect Chromebooks so kids don't take them home if this helps reduce breakage or loss, and pupils could still work at home using a Chrome browser on their home PC if they wished unlike iPads because Chromebooks save all user data, and settings in the cloud, and the apps are in the cloud.