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  • dylan522p - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link

    Holy hell that is so overpriced.
  • FITCamaro - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link

    You're paying for the more rugged packaging and extra software.
  • FITCamaro - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link

    Let me also add that I hope none of these sell. Teach kids the old fashioned way. With paper and pen. It worked just fine for the rest of us. I support electronic text books but think parents should have to pay for the device to use them themselves. Tax payers aren't here to provide kids with the latest and greatest way to read a book.
  • designerfx - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link

    This is silly and irrelevant. Modern technology exists and there is no reason not to leverage it.

    Ruggedizing is important considering kids tend to trash the heck out of hardware.
  • FITCamaro - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link

    There is a reason. It's expensive. And taxpayers are broke. We have more important things to worry about than making sure kids can use tablets instead of books. It's unnecessary for the education process.

    And when I was a kid (I'm 31 btw), if you trashed a book, that meant you just permanently bought it. How about there be consequences to kids trashing stuff rather than taxpayers footing the bill for it.
  • jamdev12 - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link

    You know, I've had this debate as well, but I have to say there plusses and minuses for both. The feedback loop created with an electronic device is by all means much faster than pen and paper, though I will say that based on studies done with kids in the developed world, kids from Finland do alot better than our kids here and they don't use electronic devices in the classroom. Of course they do have other things going for them, like teachers who are treaded decently (not saying all teachers deserve this, there are some bad ones in the system that should be thrown out). In the end there are positives and negatives to both.
  • hpglow - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link

    Have you bought a textbook? They are damn expensive. My college books were ususally $80 to $130 a peice. I can't imagine K-12 are any less expensive. If a school could eliminate a book or two or save $10 to $20 per book that a tablet could pay for itself after a couple years. Assuming the kids didn't trash them.

    There is no reason to assume that kids parents wouldn't be responsible for a broken tablet. This, however is a big sticking point of a tab... durability. No matter how well they ruggidize them a book is pretty damn durable when it comes to being slammed around. The next issue is that there are distractions avalible on a tablet. I would hope the software would be designed to mitigate this but who know these are schools.
  • SunLord - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link

    Normally I'd agree with you but Books are very expensive and most school districts keep reusing outdated books or have made it so you aren't allowed to take a book out of the class room. So students are no longer assigned books they can take home and they can only read them in the classroom because its to expensive to replace them.

    If every student has a tablet the school can buy an eBook license to cover every student in a grade and then they only have to worry about a student braking a tablet vs ruining an out a print book that's super expensive to replace. The cost of eBook might be a concern but I have a feeling Google has worked out price deals so books are well below what a print version would cost plus updates and revisions are easily fixed so they don't need to re-buy 1000 books just to get the newest updated info.

    The only place that will have issues will be the backwater shit holes pushing creationism and young earth which I doubt will make it into the Google play bookstore
  • loki1725 - Sunday, May 18, 2014 - link

    Sadly it doesn't work this way. eBooks cost school districs FAR more money than paper text books. When a district buys a set of paper based books, they anticipate that set last ~10 years. When you buy a license of an eBook, that license isn't transferable from one year to the next. It's assigned to a student, and when that student moves on, the license moves on with them. That means a district has the buy every book, for every student, every year. A 10X increase of paper books. This is the primary reason why schools, even schools that heavily invest in technology, still use paper based books.

    It's sad, and stupid that the publishing model works this way but there isn't a lot of effort to change it in the K-12 space yet. College is getting some traction with free/low cost eBooks but that's a much more competitive market.
  • lifeblood - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link

    "Teach kids the old fashioned way."

    And how would that be, with books and a whiteboard? Or with a chalkboard? Or with figures drawn in the dirt with sticks? Can we whip kids with switches like in the old days?

    New doesn’t necessarily mean better, but neither does it mean worse. A tablet can enable new, more efficient methods of learning. The real trick is to figure out what works best for what you’re trying to teach. Some subjects can be improved with technology, other things can’t. If it can be demonstrated how tablets enhance learning, then bring them on.
  • Vigneshj - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link

    Seriously, could not understand the act of saving that 0.5 GB RAM, which would be then blamed for lack of memory, scrapping any future Android OS updates from Samsung.
  • FredWebsters - Thursday, December 6, 2018 - link

    As for me such app isn't so useful like the services from the company <a href='https://au.papersowl.com/do-my-assignment'>... proposes. As for me that the company does assignments for students is cooler than this app!
  • piroroadkill - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link

    Wow. $369 for a tablet that has the same specs as ~$100 random chinese tablets.

    They really are screwing over schools. No thanks, Samsung.
  • nathanddrews - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link

    I think most ruggedized devices command a premium, like for law enforcement and military applications. You also don't shoot for maximum specs, but rather reliability and uniformity. You aren't paying for the latest gadget, but something that is easy to use, service, and replace. Cheap Chinese tablets won't cut it for this sort of massive deployment.

    Whatever ruggedized means in this context is a different story. IP67? Just an elaborate, tough case? Gorilla Glass 2? 3? More information on that would be nice.
  • dylan522p - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link

    You mean a toughbook. This is a joke compared to those.
  • abhaxus - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link

    $100 chinese tablets don't have IPS/PLS displays, decent touch responsiveness, or anywhere near the fit and finish of the Tab 4. From your post it looks like you've never actually used a $100 budget tablet or a Tab 4.
  • piroroadkill - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link

    I've used cheap tablets and expensive tablets.

    I also work in a school, so I know it's not worth spending a lot of money on a good quality product that will get wrecked.
  • Shadowmaster625 - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link

    It is so overpriced because of all the bloat in the education system. How many ipads have taxpayers bought? And I'm sure they paid way way more than $399 for them too.

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