ChromeOS or Android - Desktop AIO

[toastem2004]

I have undertaken a project that has 360 no scoped me pretty hard. A customer is launching a management education class. In order to control this project he wants machines customized and delivered to his clients. Initially this was going to be Windows based AIO's with DeepFreeze on them. After talking costs ($600 parts/software + my labor) he torpedoed that very quickly. Thankfully his web developers who just so happen to be getting into the app making game suggested a 24" android tablet! what fun...

My question is does anyone here have hands-on experience with ChromeOS, or Android in a office productivity setting?

These systems are mainly going to be used for video conferencing, viewing pdf's and writing up basic documents. My area of concern is printing and scanning abilities, as well as remote management of them.

I appreciate any and all suggestions, input, and any alternatives.

ChromeOS System: Here & Here
Android System: This one OR This one

 

[xvi]

For remote access, TeamViewer will control Android devices, but it needs someone to accept the connection on the other side. Can't be set up for remote access without input, as far as I know.
I recently bought a cheap Rockchip RK3288 "media center box" thing. I thought it'd be kind of nice, but USB input devices kind of hangs and cuts out. Not really ideal for any sort of PC replacement.

How much power do these things need? Any chance a Rasp Pi (or similar mini-pc) would have enough horsepower to do the job?

I'd suggest Linux of some sort if there's going to be coding done. I don't think ChromeOS or Android would do everything you're looking for gracefully.

Edit: Honestly, I'd say a small form factor x86 PC (Bay Trail Celeron/Atom something?) and Ubuntu would be fairly ideal for a low-cost Mobile App development PC. Ubuntu is what Android recommends for app development anyways.

 

[toastem2004]

They don't need much power. I have thought about using Raspberry Pi, but i don't necessarily want to get into the manufacturing/assembly. I'm just a one man shop, and I would not want to spend 2-3 days every week working on just this guys stuff. Right now, he's looking at 12 total systems or so for this year, but on Jan 1st of 2016, He's going public with this class and wants 50-60 built and ready to ship by Feb 1st with another 20 in "inventory" ready for assembly, setup, and shipping. I'm mainly fighting a cost war, and his developers who are very entrenched with creating an "app" for all this.

*when i say app, I mean an android app. ChromeOS has some ability to run android apps

 

[xvi]

If you're aiming for something mostly pre-built, I'd say a mini-PC with a decent embedded proc might fit the bill (such as this Asus Eee Box at Newegg + some extra memory, probably). It's inexpensive, low power, has decent horsepower, and already has Windows (albeit Windows with Bing). If they're really against Windows, it should run Linux just fine.

Edit: I picked that one specifically for its Celeron J1900 processor. Four cores at 2GHz with only a 10 watt TDP seemed pretty impressive. It's one of the most energy efficient WCG crunchers we've seen.

 

[ShiBDiB]

Get the tablet model and make a custom ROM with preinstalled apps to complete all necessary tasks while also locking any non app store apk's from being installed.

Building PC's for every student is an antiquated way of tackling this. And also probably leaves you open to more hardware issues.

video conferencing - ooVoo or Skype
viewing pdf's - Adobe
writing up basic documents - Google Docs
printing and scanning abilities - There's plenty of scanning apps assuming the tablet has a camera of some sort. And printing can be accomplished via google printing.

remote management - What are you looking to do exactly?

 

[OneMoar]

I would go with something linux based
I prefer Linux Mint(MATE) over Ubuntu tho
you get ubuntus package library sans bloated gui

 

[toastem2004]

I appreciate everyones input. All i can say right now is this client is very, very stubborn. To the point where I am thinking about droping him as a client; he for the most part, will not heed my advice or suggestions. He solicits it from his two web developers/app programmers first, then asks me. Most of the time, mine differs from theirs and he dismisses mine and takes theirs, leaving me to make something work that generally won't.

That being said, I did get him to drop his idea of a 20" android 4.2 powered AIO (YEAH). I ordered in the LG Chromebase, and I'm quite impressed thus far. It was open box so it already had users; was a breze to restore to factory. I haven't delved into it too much, but I can see this working for about 75% of the things he wants it to do.

It might be a while, but i will certainly update this here as I get more hands on time with the system.

 

[silentbogo]

Android AIO is a horrible idea. I've tried similar setup on my Cubietruck and it only did well as a base for media center setup due to stable GPU acceleration. Switched to Cubiez (debian port for Allwinner A10/A20)

If you don't care about touch screen and other crap and something similar comes up in the future - go with Linaro or build on top of the base debian/ubuntu distro.

HARDWARE:
- RaspberryPi 2 is just catching up with competition in terms of specs: it should be good enough for educational/office usage (quad-core ARM CPU/1GB RAM).
- I've always wanted to experiment with NVidia Jetson TK1 : it's basically the best low-powe thing on the market and has a full-featured 192 core Kepler GPU, 2GB of DDR3 and 16GB of internal flash memory!
- Cubieboard 4 features Allwinner A58 CPU and is one of the very few consumer products on the market with a 64-bit ARM chip, USB 3.0 and tons of peripherals.
- Cubietruck (CB3) is not as powerful, but has a SATA port and can easily handle SSDs and 2.5" HDDs without an additional power supply.

P.S. If anyone has $192.00 just laying around with no purpose at all - give it to me! IwannaplaywithTK1andbuildanevilrobot!!!

 

[OneMoar]

ODROID > Cubieboard http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php
avoid anything with knock-off based ARM chips such as allwinner,rockchip,atmtel
if its not broadcom,samsung,qualcom
then don't buy it
and the pi2 is as usless as the pi1 in terms of computing power
1GB ram is not adequate for a modern ARM V8 based distro I would't go with anything less then 2GB

 

[silentbogo]

ODROID > Cubieboard http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php
avoid anything with knock-off based ARM chips such as allwinner,rockchip,atmtel
if its not broadcom,samsung,qualcom
then don't buy it
and the pi2 is as usless as the pi1 in terms of computing power
1GB ram is not adequate for a modern ARM V8 based distro I would't go with anything less then 2GB

Absolutely agree on RPi, because it is my least favorite system (and it sucks). The only advantage it has over competitors is availability - you can buy it on almost every dark corner of any city in the world. It also runs very hot even with downclocking (mandatory HSF required).

Allwinner CPUs on the other hand aren't that bad. I haven't had a chance to try cubieboard 4, but I was quite happy running Fedora 20 on my Cubietruck. It is OK for simple tasks like word processing, some coding and basic internet connectivity, given that you are running lightweight desktop manager like LXDE and not something heavier. I also ran it as a headless ubuntu-based NAS/Print server/Torrent box for almost a year without a single hiccup. It's nice to have a more powerful CPU and extra gig of RAM, but the ability to hook up a 750GiB SATA drive beats it all. The only problem with these is price: CB3 costs around $75-80, while CB4 is still ~$125. They've also announced CB5 a few days ago. Should be very similar to Exynos-based boards in terms of specs, but will also include 2GB RAM/16GB ROM, SATA support and other trinkets. The only thing they got rid of is a VGA port, which I really liked in my Cubietruck.

I've heard some good things about Odroid XU3/4. There was a demo on youtube once, where dudes hooked it up to a FullHD 42" TV with custom touch interface to demonstrate its graphics and media capabilities. Very impressive.

... Still wanna try the TK1 though...

 

[OneMoar]

Absolutely agree on RPi, because it is my least favorite system (and it sucks). The only advantage it has over competitors is availability - you can buy it on almost every dark corner of any city in the world. It also runs very hot even with downclocking (mandatory HSF required).

Allwinner CPUs on the other hand aren't that bad. I haven't had a chance to try cubieboard 4, but I was quite happy running Fedora 20 on my Cubietruck. It is OK for simple tasks like word processing, some coding and basic internet connectivity, given that you are running lightweight desktop manager like LXDE and not something heavier. I also ran it as a headless ubuntu-based NAS/Print server/Torrent box for almost a year without a single hiccup. It's nice to have a more powerful CPU and extra gig of RAM, but the ability to hook up a 750GiB SATA drive beats it all. The only problem with these is price: CB3 costs around $75-80, while CB4 is still ~$125. They've also announced CB5 a few days ago. Should be very similar to Exynos-based boards in terms of specs, but will also include 2GB RAM/16GB ROM, SATA support and other trinkets. The only thing they got rid of is a VGA port, which I really liked in my Cubietruck.

I've heard some good things about Odroid XU3/4. There was a demo on youtube once, where dudes hooked it up to a FullHD 42" TV with custom touch interface to demonstrate its graphics and media capabilities. Very impressive.

... Still wanna try the TK1 though...

the XTU-4 does everything you want for 80.00 + the optional EMMC its also got twice the cpu power

 

[silentbogo]

Looking at Odroid benchmarks right now : seems like even a $35 Odroid C1 beats the crap out of RPi2.

And the winner is...

http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php