Google announced today that Chromebooks for education will be available for $99 through December 21st (see the Reuters article, Google makes MIT prof’s dream of $100 laptops for students a reality).

I don’t know how realistic it is for teachers to arrange permissions through their district’s bureaucratic maze to make these kinds of purchases within two weeks, especially with the exclusive arrangements that many have with companies for their technology purchases, but it does demonstrate that perhaps costs for this kind of equipment can reach manageable levels eventually.

Of course, another potential problem is their compatibility, or lack of compatibility, with the upcoming technology requirements of the next generation of standardized testing.