Volunteering as “IT-manager” for a non-profit organization I have been evaluating an Acer Chromebook 314 (intel i3 based) for a couple of weeks and I am blown away with functionality and price/performance ratio. We are using Microsoft 365 Teams and during the years we have been struggling with BYOD but run into constant problems if the users are already in a Microsoft 365 organization – the non-profit E1 tier is not playing nicely with commercial tiers!
We have been limping forward with Chrome profiles it has been the secret sauce to solve this issue. Most of our users are up and running.
Out of curiosity I bought a Chomebook and has been performing my non-profit work to 100% using this Chromebook and I am impressed. The Teams web-client is completely compatible and running meetings and the office applications without a glitch. The only issue I have found so far is that Chrome (the browser) is not supporting multiple profiles in Chrome OS – really convenient as an admin!
The hardware is pretty decent at the price ($480 in Sweden). The keyboard is really nice with a distinct throw and island style that I really like. A bit quirky layout without the Win/Mac-key but it works. The Full-HD screen is really nice but the 16:9 aspect is hard for a long-time Mac user to accept – 16:10 is so much nicer. Battery doesn’t leave anything to wish for. Connects like a charm to my iPhone and WiFi. The trackpad could have been a bit nicer, but I like the small size instead of the enormous trackpads these days.
As “IT-manager” is see the big benefit here as a completely hands-off device without any problems with drivers, OS updates or AV/Firewall issues.
So – what is Microsoft’s response to this? Will we see any nice Windows-based devices running 10X or something similar with just the Teams client?
Your thoughts greatly appreciated!
/Mattias