Andrew Jorgensen
It's better than bad, it's good!

Chrome OS Tablets?

Acer announced the first Chrome OS Tablet in May 2018. The Chromebook Tab 10 was targetted at the Education market, most likely younger kids who don't type as much. I have strong opinions about Chromebooks for Education, of which more later if you care to read it. Most of the reviews I've read have come down to something like, "but why?" - I disagree.

Chromebook Tab
10

First a bit about the device. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

It has a Wacom EMR stylus, which is wicked cool tech - it behaves like an active stylus (tilt, pressure, etc.), but operates by passively resonating with a signal emitted by the digitizer, so no batteries. The stylus lives in a little hole that school kids are gonna put Play-Doh and other nasty things in, but at least it doesn't need it's own special accessory to keep track of it (I'm looking at you, Pixelbook.) On the other hand, I might have to buy a Staedtler Noris digital for Chromebook to go with it.

The back is plastic, but I like plastic. Plastic is a space age material - I'm serious. Get over it, Aluminum and Glass.

The processor is the same weird OP1 processor as in the Samsung Chromebook Plus, designed to give you speed when you need it and battery savings when it can.

And it's a tablet.

So... "but why?" A few reasons.

A 10 inch netbook is a pain in the tokhes, but a 10 inch tablet is handy. And while websites look awful in a mobile browser at 10 inches, they look much better on a full desktop browser at that size. Many sites are hobbled in their mobile versions (some for greater good, cough Facebook). A Chrome tablet gives you the better face of the web in a smaller package.

And it does so without locking you out of the Android ecosystem. In fact, the Play Store appears to register the device as a regular Android tablet, so while I can't install Minecraft on my Samsung Chromebook Plus, I totally can on the Tab 10 (until Mojang, er uh, Microsoft, decides I can't, I guess.)

Lastly, there's a good chance that Linux apps will run on the Tab 10 when that feature becomes generally available. Wild, right?

Will there be more Chrome OS tablets in the future? Yep, there will be. That's my take anyway. I like it.

Oh yeah! Chromebooks for Education? Worst. Idea. Ever. Take a bunch of kids whose minds haven't quite formed yet and demand that they do their homework on a device with access to YouTube? I am a father of four school age kids. Please tell me how to make it stop. And yes, I've tried blocking YouTube. Guess what! The teachers assign YouTube homework! I know that in some distant future we'll stop using paper and pencil entirely, but please let my kids grow up first. You are hurting them, badly. Every parent I have talked to about it agrees that it's terrible.