I was in Holland last June and heard reports about the train system changing the way they handle tickets. Lots of talk about a chip card. My question is can I still purchase a ticket at Schipol or am I now required to get a chip card and if I am required to have a chip card how does a non resident go about getting one?

Yeah, the thing is that instead of a paper ticket, the machines give you a, say, temporary chipcard, which you have to pass on the reading machines. That's all, it's a diff kind of ticket... No need to buy a permanent chipcard at all...

If you go to Amsterdam repeatedly, and regularly use the tram or bus (but not enough times daily to make a 24 or 48hr ticket worth getting) then it makes sense to use an "anonymous" OV Chipkaart which is basically travelling on pay-as-you-go credit. Single Cash fares on the tram or bus are expensive but the train costs the same with or without using a chipkaart (apart from the €0.50 credit card fee). So if you just need to travel from the airport and back it's not worth the hassle, just use the disposable one-journey tickets like the poster above says (remember to touch the ticket on the reader at the station before you get on the train, or the ticket is not validated for travel).

The OV Chipkaarts are €7.50 (which you don't get back!) and you can buy them from the blue "Verkoop and Opladen" machines in Central station (some in the metro ticket hall and some inside the main train station). You can switch the machine into English, you just specify how much credit you want to load initially then pay with cash. So if you are paying with a €20 note you might want to choose €12 credit, you will be charged €7.50 for the card (which lasts 5 years) and the machine should spit out €0.50 change and a freshly minted OV Chipkaart. When you need more credit you just use the same machines and select a topup.

If you want to use your OV Chipkaart on the train, you then have to go to an NS ticket machine and set it up for travel on NS (which is not that hard, basically you just tell the system if you want 1st Class or 2nd Class). The card is then permanently set up to allow train travel, and you check-in and check-out at the end of every journey on the readers. The only snag is that there is a minimum balance before you can use the train, I think it's officially €20 although someone mentioned that the actual amount might be lower. So you end up with a lot of credit sat on the card when you come back off holiday...or you forget to check-out at the airport and the system assumes you've travelled across the other side of Holland and deducts €20 or something silly. If you are using the tram, bus or metro there is no minimum balance as long as it's above zero at the start of the journey.

I use my OV-chipkaart a lot because I tend to be staying on the periphery of the city where I need the tram, or the bus, or the train. I recently had to renew the card because it was nearly 5 years old...time flies! The difference between the temporary tickets and the actual OV-chipkaarts is that the chipkaarts are robust plastic things, like slightly thick credit cards, while the paper tickets are just card with a disposable chip sandwiched into the middle.

Probably more info than you wanted, but the question is sure to crop up again sometime....

Just to tidy this up a bit, The minimum required on the card to travel by train is indeed €20. That amount is automatically taken off when you check-in and partly refunded (like given you change) when you check-out. There is also a minimum on trams, buses and the metro and it works the same as trains though that amount is €4. As I've mentioned before it's easy to slip up on return journeys. If you duck below that €20 (or €4) on your outward journey you must top up again before you can return. Not a problem unless you stay that extra half hour with your favourite lady and end up running for your last train.
If you'd rather queue for 15 mins than fiddle with some machine then the easiest way to top up is to go to the counter at one of the bigger stations. I have no idea if there is a counter at Schipol though.

The counter at Schipol is the farthest to the left for travel within the Netherlands. In the main hall, farther in and to the right of the escalators down to the trains.
I have to use it often, when I arrive with no change for the damn machines, and my American credit cards with no chip!
0.50 Euro service charge to get tickets from the counter.

Weasel

I was running down the credit on my old OV Chipkaart because it expires in January and I wouldn't be able to use it on my next visit. I checked out of a tram with €0.05 credit, then the next day I thought I'd see if it would let me complete another journey. I checked in OK with a green light, and I checked out OK with a green light and a negative balance of -€1.47 or something close. So I'm not sure if the official story reflects the way the system is actually set up.

Possibly you need €4 minimum to be guaranteed to complete a long journey which involves changes (for example if I tried to change from my tram to the metro after I'd gone into negative balance, it might tell me to get lost). So the €4 minimum might be a legal thing to stop you complaining if you get stranded half-way through a multi-mode journey.

I bought some printable e-tickets thru b-europe.com hopefully these work. Only way I could figure to avoid changing cash at the airport and use an american credit card.

That's very interesting and wonder if it was a fault on the system. I wonder what would happen if a ticket inspector checked it mid journey. I have certainly been unable to check-in to trains with less than 20 Euros though that was a few years ago.

Yeah, the €4 is the "official" minimum balance required to check in. I checked in for the metro the other day (and then successfully transferred -- "overstap ok" -- to the bus) with something like €2,10 on my card and I've had a negative balance on check-out in past too. Funny enough, I was actually discussing this very discrepancy with a coworker yesterday. I agree with Aldebran; the lawyers must have told them to just say it's €4. Makes sense when you consider it in that light.

What time in the night the trams stop running in Amsterdam? Approximately.

I got an OV-Chipkaart for the first time on my recent trip. Very easy. I went to the NS counter at Schiphol, asked for an anonymous card with a certain amount of credit and handed over the cash. I was told that it was activated for NS trains because I'd bought it at their counter and I was asked to confirm that 2nd class was correct. I was told that it was automatically activated for tram travel, and I imagine this must mean nationwide, because I hadn't told him where I was traveling to.

After that, it was a simple case of checking in and out with the card readers at stations/Metro stations/onboard trams. When you check out the reader tells you how much credit is left.