Long before distance learning became a necessity, Chromebooks were already taking over classrooms. The education sector accounted for 72% of the overall Chromebook industry share in 2014. Just three years later, over half of all mobile computing shipments to United States K-12 institutions were Chromebooks.
Today the massive shift to remote education has made these portable, low-cost mobile devices more popular than ever. Twenty million Chromebooks are predicted to ship during 2020. That’s a 17% increase over the previous year. Furthermore, the education sector alone isn’t responsible for that demand. Chromebooks are making inroads in finance, hospitality and real estate too.
Despite their popularity, Google Cloud Print’s end of life has created a major sticking point for IT staff.
As a result, Chromebook printing has a pretty big question mark hanging over it. Is the ease of Chromebook classroom management negated by the hassle of Chromebook print management?
Bringing ease and oversight to Chromebook printing
PrinterLogic’s Chrome OS Extension offers a better way to manage Chromebook printing than ever before.
Whether they’re based in education or the enterprise, IT departments that use PrinterLogic can easily deploy printers to Chromebook users from a single pane of glass. They don’t have to resort to bespoke, Chromebook specific driver variants, because PrinterLogic leverages the native Chrome OS workflow and the familiar G-Suite dashboard.
Better still, unlike many cloud printing solutions, print jobs stay local with PrinterLogic. If there’s a dedicated classroom printer, IT can have students automatically print to that device without any extra steps. Print jobs travel straight from their Chromebook to their default printer. Keeping print jobs local also makes for speedier printing.
For state and local education institutions, using the PrinterLogic Chrome OS Extension for Chromebook printing brings key advantages:
- Reduce staff hours devoted to print management. In the past, managing drivers and printers has been tedious and time-consuming. PrinterLogic makes it simple and streamlined.
- Manage printing for your Chromebook fleet from anywhere. PrinterLogic SaaS enables Chromebook printing without the cloud but retains all the sought-after cloud benefits. You’ll enjoy full admin control no matter where you happen to be.
- Provision like a pro. Admins can deploy printers to Chrome OS devices based on AD users/groups, Google ID users/groups, endpoint IP address, Chromebook serial number or Chromebook asset ID.
- Stay on top of things. Thanks to built-in reporting and SNMP support, PrinterLogic can alert IT when a printer needs attention or if print usage is unusually high.
Future-proofing the classroom
The flexibility and affordability of Chromebooks have made them go-to solutions for education. They’re perfect for today’s classroom, and they’re also helping to create the classroom of tomorrow. The simplicity and convenience of Chromebook classroom management is a big part of that.
With PrinterLogic’s Chrome OS Extension, network admins can meet the printing needs of their school districts with less effort.
Even in mixed-OS environments, IT can support an agile print-management strategy. For instance, with PrinterLogic, they can easily scale to meet the demands of the print environment as it evolves. And because PrinterLogic is printer-agnostic, it will work with both legacy and current printing devices.
If you want to dive into more detail, check out our white paper on Chromebook printing in K-12 environments with PrinterLogic.