Skip to main content

Chromebooks - new Samsung Series 3

Chromebooks - new Samsung Series 3

Samsung have just released a new Chromebook and my resolve was weak so I bought one.
For those of you who don't know these run Chrome OS, not windows. This is a browser based OS - so its essentially Google Chrome with a few addons. You sign into the device with your Google account. If you are a Google Apps user, the device can be configured in your Google Apps Admin Centre.

A couple of picts:

This model is the Samsung Series 3 WiFi. Costs £229 inc vat.
There are reviews online - but some brief observations:

  • Startup in seconds and login is about 2 seconds. 
  • Power down in a second or two.
  • Silent and next to no heat.
  • Battery seems to last forever - I'm sure it does not - but I've yet to see it go down.
  • You get HDMI out so with the right cable can connect to most things. I've had it doing HD iplayer on a 37" 1080p TV - no issues.
  • There is on SD card slot. You can download stuff to this as well as downloading stuff locally. You can also use Google Docs and Mail offline if you lose connection.
  • The screen is OK - but I've seen better - but at this price its hard to complain.
  • You get a 100Gb Google Drive account with the machine.
There are no updates or antivirus to worry about. Just turn it on and go. As long as you don't want to use office (well you can if you use Nexus) or play Windows games, it the perfect little productivity tool.

I've also got an android tablet with a keyboard (Asus Transformer). While this is a great device, I use it for games and consuming media. This is a far better device for making stuff.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Delete a specific email using GAM

If a user send an inappropriate email to a loads of people or get stung by some sort of email exploit you can quickly delete the email from all of the recipients using a GAM command. Step 1 - get the email header Go into Google Vault and search for the offending user or someone known to have got the message. Click show details and grab the email ID. This will be a long string of characters followed by @mail.gmail.com Step 2 - find out who has the email Go into Google Vault and find the original message sent by the offending user. Look at the details to see who got it. Copy the list and dump it into a spreadsheet. Clean up to just a list of emails with a column header 'mail'. Save as a csv file. Step 3 - delete messages with GAM Put your CSV file in your GAM folder - this e.g. assumes its called mail.csv Run: gam csv mail.csv gam user ~mail delete messages query rfc822msgid: MESSAGEIDHERE doit The alternative nuke option is: gam all users delete messages query rf
Post a Comment
Read more

Adding subdomains to G Suite

This is how I add subdomains (so basically new schools) to out G suite setup. I've got these steps documented on a scruffy set of notes that I've now got in Keep - so time to document them - for myself as much as anyone else! Steps in order (roughly) Add the new domain Verify the new domain Add MX records to hosting Add SPF record for Google to hosting Turn on email authentication Add DMARC record to hosting Setup custom Directory and restrict students OU to this. Create an admin quarantine for the domain. Configure SPAM setting for the domain. Turn on and off services as appropriate. Map a blank Google Site to the naked domain - if required. Setup some basic groups - allstaff, allusers (for directory) and students with appropriate permissions. Deploy custom wallpapers. So the steps in a bit of detail: Add the new domain & Verify ownership Click on Domains in the admin console: Add/remove domains followed by "add a domain" At this
Post a Comment
Read more

My favorite GAM commands - well a few of them at least!

Where would be without GAM? Paying for expensive syncing tools or doing tedious manual tasks in the admin console. GAM can automate most things you might want to do in G Suite. So these are a few of my favourite commands - one I use either as part of a batch file - or just standalone. There are loads more - but these are ones that are used daily. Classroom Create a spreadsheet of all your domains classes -  gam print courses todrive Create a spreadsheet of a teacher's classes:  gam print courses teacher fred@mydomain.com todrive Bulk create classes: gam csv classes.csv gam create course alias ~alias name ~alias section ~subject teacher ~teacher status ACTIVE where classes.csv is a list of classes you want to make. Add teachers: gam csv teachers.csv gam course ~alias add teacher ~teacher Add students: gam csv students.csv gam course ~alias add teacher ~student Sync Students (in this example to a group - but could be an ou/csv file) gam csv groups.csv gam course ~g
Post a Comment
Read more