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0 pointsAbishek_Muthian4y ago0 comments

Rich states like Tamilnadu already have a successful free laptop program for Govt. high-school students and Govt. colleges.

Recent specs were LENOVO E41-25 (81FS) with AMD A4 and 4GB memory. There are rumors that there will be an upgrade this year with HP manufacturing the laptop as Lenovo is barred from Govt. contracts in India.

It's to be noted that the said state has also made all educational content for schools distributed over free-to-air channels.

So a modular computer based out of RPi which can receive TV/Radio can technically cost lesser than the aforementioned full-fledged laptop. I've been brainstorming such a device with others on the thread mentioned on my parent comment.

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Abishek_MuthianOP4y ago

Also when talking about inexpensive compute device for education, We cannot ignore Chromebooks. Asus Chromebook C223 costs just $189 that's for device with 11.6" display, dual core CPU, 4GB RAM, 32GB storage+SD card, HD cam and WiFi5. RPi + similar accessories would cost more.

I think Google is subsidizing entry level Chromebooks.

Of course usefulness of ChromeOS itself or the privacy implications is debatable and sadly full UEFI firmware replacement for this particular device isn't possible but there are lots of other chromebooks where we can run Linux/Windows or to some extent even macOS like regular PC.

But in my experience[1] browsing experience on an entry level Chromebook is miles ahead of any ARM based SBC mainly due to hardware acceleration mess.

[1] https://abishekmuthian.com/reviewing-the-chromebook-google-s...