CTL Launches New Chromebook For Education
by Brett Howse on March 31, 2015 1:01 PM EST
The education sector is one area where Google’s Chromebook has proved very popular. Relatively inexpensive devices, which are easier to manage, and include just a lightweight operating system, have certainly gained a foothold there. School Divisions which have bought into the Google Apps ecosystem would seem to have an easy decision to move to Chrome OS.
There are several companies which specialise in the education sector. CTL is one of those companies, and today they are launching a new even lower cost entry into the Chrome OS education market. The CTL Chromebook J2 and J4 for Education both feature the quad-core Cortex A17 based processor, and in this case it is the RK3288 made by Rockchip. The differentiation is laid out in the name, with the J2 featuring 2 GB of memory, and the J4 having 4 GB of RAM.
As these are aimed at the less than forgiving student population, they are available with a three year warranty with accidental damage coverage. Also, of interest to the sector, they will come with one year of Securly content filtering and analysis, so that schools and parents can set automatic filters for approved sites. In addition, they can be bundled with the Chrome Device Management licenses, Hapara licenses, and Pearson Education Software and eTextbooks.
These are low cost devices, and as such are outfitted with some low cost components. The J2 starts at $179, or $199 with the Chrome Device Management license. The J4 bumps the price to $209 and $229 respectively. Both feature an 11.6 inch 1366x768 matte display, 16 GB of eMMC storage, and a 1.3 MP webcam.
CTL lists the new Chromebook at over nine hours of battery life though, which should be adequate for most school tasks. The device is relatively thin and light too, with it coming in at just 2.46 lbs (1.12 kg) and they feature an HDMI port, two USB 2.0 ports, a micro SD card slot, and 802.11ac wireless.
While these will not be the fastest devices available with Chrome OS (for that a school would have to purchase the new Pixel) getting the price down should help out with school budgets.
For those in education who want to check out the new devices, the CTL Chromebook for Education J2 and CTL Chromebook for Education J4 can be sourced from www.ctl.net.
Source: CTL
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twotwotwo - Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - link
Three Rockchip A17-based Chromebooks dropped today (the others are from Haier and Hisense).A17 sounds like an amped-up A15, but, alas, it looks like A17 is lower-end or at best even: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7739/arm-cortex-a17
sprockkets - Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - link
That chip has A12's in it but since ARM says they changed it a little so that it equals A17's, so they are the A17 now.Works great for Android boxes. Good enough to play N64 at 1080p (the CPU is more the limiter instead of the graphics). I've tested 4k content on it too with a 4k tv and it works without a hitch.
mczak - Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - link
Technically, it's not really an amped-up A15. As was already mentioned, it's a slightly improved A12 (CCI among others changed, so unlike the A12 it's now possible to combine A17 clusters with A7 ones). From a theoretical point of view, this is more like a really spiced up A9 on steroids - it is still 2-wide issue, unlike the A15 which is 3-wide issue. However, it is vastly improved compared to Cortex A9, among others way more OoO resources - which should make it match the A15 in performance or so they claim. At hopefully lower power draw. I really want to see some proper review of a device with A17 in it!I think the only problem with it is that it's a bit late at least for the smartphone party - everybody is now hopping on the 64bit train even for low-end devices, so everybody is shipping 4xCortex-A53 on the lower end (even though 2xA17 would probably provide a much better experience).
aryonoco - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link
Hear hearJoshua (or perhaps it was Andrei?) said a while ago that they were going to review A17 but sourcing the right device was difficult apparently.
I would love to now more about A17. From Android benchmarks from not-very-reputable sources I've seen, it more than matches A15 at the same clock speed. Come to think of it, 4xA17 at 2.5Ghz should be pretty potent actually.
twotwotwo - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link
Haha, the "but" in "sounds like an amped-up A15, *but*..." was supposed to convey "but it's not."Anyhow, yes, I'd love to see it properly reviewed. In the post I linked to, Anand said "ARM expects to be able to deliver similar performance to the Cortex A15 (in mobile apps/benchmarks, likely not in absolute performance), but in a much smaller area and at a lower power." We'll see, I guess! The Verge got to play with the Hisense laptop and got the impression the CPU was "pretty solid," which is encouraging.
BackInAction - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link
No 13" model? I guess for K-8. But as an adult, I find 11" screens and keyboards too small if used for more a few moments.zubairali - Sunday, December 17, 2017 - link
This is good news for the students that CTL Launches new chromebook for education. The complete detail or features of this chromebook you like to included in this article. However, I try to get more relevant information about this topic which i got from www.rushmypapers.org and hope this will useful for every student because it help to make their learning easy.zubairali - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link
good information here. https://www.google.comlolagragerson - Wednesday, February 13, 2019 - link
Nice Chromebook!!! You can use it to visit http://baahkast.com/fundamental-writing-format-ter... for reding best educational blog on writing tipsFaciet - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
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