Why would a rental/lease be a bad option? Businesses do it for all sorts of equipment. Students already do it for books, why not for other things that are required for school?
Update: Thinking more on it while watching baseball, I do the same thing for my DVR. No up-front fee or contract, but I have an expensive piece of technology for a low monthly fee. I could buy a Tivo, but this works fine.
You are comparing watching TV to a vital communication tool that is essential to the student experience. It's fair enough that you may not have an issue with it. But in my opinion the thought of a large multinational being able to go "poof, I hereby revoke your access to the Internet" in an academic environment to be frightening.
There is also the factor of "crap, I somehow missed a payment and now I can't complete my coursework" when colleges are busy trying to get rid of computer labs because "everyone has a laptop".
If a student were to outright buy a netbook using financial aid then those concerns go away.
Again I wouldn't give a crap either way if it were a contract/ETF arrangement but rent to always rent just seems like a bad financial habit to develop early in life.
My ISP is a large corporation and can say "poof, I herby revoke your access to the internet" and I'd be pretty screwed. Miss a payment there and suddenly that distance learning class goes away too. Same for if you miss a payment to the university FWIW.
There are pros to this arrangement. Laptops get stolen all the time at universities and students aren't always known to keep great backups. Being able to log-on from anywhere (in one of those disappearing labs, another student's laptop or your smartphone) and having access to your stuff is a big win.
I think it's interesting and while wouldn't want this to be the only option I can definitely see the benefit of it being an option.
The first is that you wouldn't be fiscally responsible for the full cost if the device was stolen from you. In this case it would be worse than owning out right. As now you're on the hook for the cost of the device you lost at the time you need to pick up another device. Are they going to allow you to rent the second device? Details would be nice.
Also when at a college your college is usually your ISP. And at the one I work at as long as you have access to the classroom then you have access to the network.
I agree with the backups part but that is independent of this particular arrangement as Google Apps works on non-rented devices too. :)
> There is also the factor of "crap, I somehow missed a payment and now I can't complete my coursework" when colleges are busy trying to get rid of computer labs because "everyone has a laptop".
Assuming you're doing most of your work in Google Docs, this wouldn't be a problem. ChromeOS is really just a fancier thin-client, after all.
In fact, for a lot of forgetful/irresponsible students, having their data in Google's cloud is a good way to save their asses from data loss/device theft.
Google Docs assumes you have access to the Internet in a form that is usable for the composing a document. Hense why I mentioned the traditional computer labs going away.
Update: Thinking more on it while watching baseball, I do the same thing for my DVR. No up-front fee or contract, but I have an expensive piece of technology for a low monthly fee. I could buy a Tivo, but this works fine.