Can one use a Chromebook for small student studies?

I have a friend who has 2 kids aged around 12. He was asking me to find himi 2 cheap laptops that they can use for school and e-learning so I found him a cheap Dell Inspiron but then he asks me what about these Chromebooks they are very cheap?

I told him that is a an Android based OS so if the school asks them to install any program they wouldn't be able to unless it's on the Play Store.

He did mention that they use Microsoft Teams for the online learning but I am not sure what they'd do if they needed to use Microsoft Office or Adobe products.

What do you think? Is it possible for a young student to solely work on a Chromebook or would they bet better off spending more and buying a regular Windows laptop?

 

My 13 yo has an older acer s3. I upgraded the drive to a 500gb Kingston ssd. It's quick, and plenty of computer for him. Windows 10 1909 runs very smoothly and you have windows instead of a half of an os like chrome. I would suggest a used windows based system in top condition.

 

My son has a Chromebook supplied to him by the local school district, and that's what he's been using for his remote learning.

 

What part of the world are you in? We are pretty well on lock down here. My wife and I are dipping our toes in the homeschooling pool. As Colin has autism we need to try to provide some sort of structure for this trying time.

 

Location is in my profile that you can see whenever I post.


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@kojack after reading @saturnotaku 's comment.....

 

Ha ha, too funny! We are all indoors for an extended period of time. Some humor makes it go better.

 

ChromeOS is based off a fork of Gentoo, not android. You can install Linux on them, but that negates the point of buying a chromebook.

Honestly, if all there stuff is online (Google Drive etc) and you can find them cheap enough, and they don't want to buy used, go for it. I don't know what their budget is, but if they can spend abbout $300 per, they can grab Acers with 3200U/128GB SSDs for around that price which are fine machines and can do some light gaming if they so please.

 

Not if they need to use Windows applications like MS Office or Adobe, or anything else that is made for Windows and doesn't run on ChromeOS. If all they need is a web browser and Chrome apps, they should be able to get by. If the only basis for having it is for is participating in a virtual classroom and all of their learning exercises are browser based using an internet connection it should be fine as long as there is a ChromeOS version of MS Teams. Google Docs might be enough for them to fake having MS Office, depending on how complex the documents are that need to be opened or edited. Creating new documents from scratch that are MS Office compatible should be fine using Google Docs. Complex Word and Excel documents (things like macros enabled) may not function correctly as Google Docs. I find that is often the case.