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by jeffxtreme 2055 days ago
Even for non-STEM students, the Pi setup seems fairly accessible.

From a quick online search, I could find monitors for $30 - $50 and webcams $20 - $30 which is pretty price competitive with a $200 - $300 Chromebook. The Pi community would help with any driver installation issues, and the Pi setup seems powered up enough to run Zoom with no issues.

Though I do see even cheaper Chromebooks in the same price range, so I wonder why / how districts are not able to provide these to students.
1 comments
my123 2055 days ago
Chromebooks right now are in a quite huge shortage: https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20201029PD205.html

> Component shortages continue to disrupt Acer's Chromebook shipments, which can fulfill only 30% of customer orders, with shipments for the remainders having to be deferred, according to the company.

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jeffxtreme 2055 days ago
Ah still? Interesting. Maybe supply is geographically dependent, as I'm seeing Chromebook availability in Walmart / Amazon / directly from Acer. The sub-$200 laptops are mostly used or renewed though, so maybe school districts are more hesitant to purchase those.
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ineedasername 2054 days ago
They're available around me like that too, but not in sufficient quantities. If my district tried to buy 1,000 from Walmart, they wouldn't be able to. They're trickling in from suppliers slowly. It's also difficult to do a dozen of one type, 50 of another model, etc. The district needs to support these, and the more models there are the bigger the burden of support, different OS versions and levels of support/updates from the manufacturer. So, not a first choice, but it's still better than nothing. If they managed to get 200 more kids learning then it would be worth it.
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