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Hello,

I’m working for an organization that’s put me in charge of managing Chromebooks. Management has baulked at the price of Google Apps for Work + Chrome Device Management Licenses. I’ve been exploring the Supervised User setup, but that’s proven to be buggy. Is it possible to use Supervised User accounts with Chrome Device Management without adding an additional $5 per month Google Apps user charge? Or is it possible to setup the Chrome devices so that each device gets its own password (again without incurring a $5 per user charge)? I know this is a long shot, but I just want to be able to tell management that I’ve exhausted all other possibilities.

Thanks in advance!

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Get the Management console, about $30 for the lifetime of the device and the convenience and manageability cannot be beat.

There’s cheap then there is practical, the Management console is practical and really not that expensive over the lifetime of the device. The management license transfers to replacement devices as well as long as you get the same device to replace the broken one.

At $5 per month per device you paid for the Management console in 6 months!

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Yea, I’m not familiar with the pricing you’re talking about. My organization uses the management console and it costs us about 25 dollars per device, one time fee, to manage them. Of course, I work for an educational organization so I’m sure our prices are cheaper, but compared to other MDM’s and Management suites like Airwatch, Filewave, or SCCM, you’re going to be looking at a MUCH cheaper price using chrome devices than anything else.

I would suggest showing management comparable pricing for other platforms and they might not balk as much.

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I believe $30 is for the Kiosk mode (it might also be the price for Education). Regardless, I’m pretty sure our price is $150. I think I might be able to get management to pay it, IF they don’t have to pay a per user fee on top of it (or if they do have to pay a per user fee, it’d just be for 1 user). We could get away with paying for just 1 user, if we could have different passwords for each Chromebook. Other than the different passwords, the devices would be configured exactly the same and basically just be a browser in Ephemeral mode.

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To give you an idea, we demo’d airwatch last year and they quoted us $7.5k for the first year with 50 devices as a pilot. That was quickly declined. And I think we pay about 25k anually for our Microsoft agreement, which is actually pretty cheap, and it includes SCCM with unlimited clients. Anyhow, I highly recommend convincing management to purchase the Google management console and just pay the one time fee per device.

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Ok. Let me clarify. I recognize that we wouldn’t be charged an additional $5 per month per device. We would need to assign each device a different password for logging in, because each device is assigned to 1 user. We could achieve the effect of restricting each user to their own device by setting a per device password that only said user would have. However, we don’t want to enroll that user in Google Apps for Work, because then we’d get that extra $5 per month charge. Basically, we want 1 user to span all Chromebooks but with different passwords for each Chromebook.

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That is not possible. There are no local users on chromebooks. It has to be some sort of google account and there is only one password for it. Furthermore, what you’re attempting to do is circumventing Google’s licensing which is exactly why it’s not possible. You’re paying for 1 user account, so that’s exactly what you get. Unless you’re willing to let multiple people share the same account (and mailboxes, cloud storage, etc) you will need to purchase more user accounts.

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Re-read the OP and I see the confusion. You cannot think of these the same way as a Windows device. With the Windows device the profile and device are intrinsically intertwined, with the Google Apps the user profile and the device are completly independent. The passwords and security all reside with the user profile, not the device. In short the users setup, data, and apps all follows them no matter what Chromebook they log into.

The $5 per month per user is only for the user and the access and storage of the users data. The $25-$30 device charge is so you can tie the devices to your organization and then your users. The security in this system is monstrously superior to any Windows system. If the device is lost, stolen, or broken you lose nothing other than the device and with the managment console you can cut it off from your organization and there is no chance of a security breach. With the Google setup you can have anyone in your organization walk into a store, purchase a device from anywhere on the planet and have access to all of their data without loss. Very hard to beat at $5 per month per user!

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Right, the only way to do what you’re wanting to do is to have the users create their own free Google accounts (gmail) and allow them to use those accounts on your devices, but you will have absolutely no control over the content on those accounts.

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Yeah. We need to lock them down so that they can’t save their passwords or do anything locally.

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Well they can’t change anything locally because they would not be an admin on the machine. As long as you have the machine enrolled using the management console, only Google Admins on your domain can administrate the machine. Furthermore, the settings would be remotely managed so you wouldnt even need the machine to change anything. However, the google account would personally belong to them if you use free accounts so you would not be able to do password resets, data recovery, or account deletion if they are terminated.

Honestly the only way to do what you’re wanting to do (with user account management) is to fork out the money for more accounts or have them share them with the same password, which would be a nightmare.

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