Chromebook Expiration Date, Repair Issues 'Bad For People and Planet' (theregister.com) 102
Google Chromebooks expire too soon, saddling taxpayer-funded public schools with excessive expenses and inflicting unnecessary environmental damage, according to the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund. The Register reports: In a report on Tuesday, titled "Chromebook Churn," US PIRG contends that Chromebooks don't last as long as they should, because Google stops providing updates after five to eight years and because device repairability is hindered by the scarcity of spare parts and repair-thwarting designs. This planned obsolescence, the group claims, punishes the public and the world.
"The 31 million Chromebooks sold globally in the first year of the pandemic represent approximately 9 million tons of CO2e emissions," the report says. "Doubling the life of just Chromebooks sold in 2020 could cut emissions equivalent to taking 900,000 cars off the road for a year, more than the number of cars registered in Mississippi." The report says that excluding additional maintenance costs, longer lasting Chromebooks could save taxpayers as much as $1.8 billion dollars in hardware replacement expenses.
The US PIRG said it wants: Google to extend its ChromeOS update policy beyond current device expiration dates; hardware makers to make parts more available so their devices can be repaired; and hardware designs that enable easier part replacement and service. [...] According to US PIRG, making an average laptop releases 580 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, amounting to 77 percent of the total carbon impact of the device during its lifetime. Thus, the 31 million Chromebooks sold during the first year of the pandemic represent about 8.9 million tons of CO2e emissions. "We think that Google should extend the automatic update expiration to 10 years after launch date," said Lucas Gutterman, who leads US PIRG's Designed to Last campaign. "There's just no reason why we should be throwing away a computer that still is otherwise functional just because it passes a certain date."
"We're asking Google to use their leadership among the OEMs to design the devices to last, to make some of the changes that we list, to have them be more easily repairable by actually producing spare parts that folks can buy at reasonable prices," he added. "And to design with modularity and repair in mind, so that you can, for example, use the plastic bezel on one Chromebook on the next version, rather than having to buy a whole new set of spare parts just because a clip has changed."
"The 31 million Chromebooks sold globally in the first year of the pandemic represent approximately 9 million tons of CO2e emissions," the report says. "Doubling the life of just Chromebooks sold in 2020 could cut emissions equivalent to taking 900,000 cars off the road for a year, more than the number of cars registered in Mississippi." The report says that excluding additional maintenance costs, longer lasting Chromebooks could save taxpayers as much as $1.8 billion dollars in hardware replacement expenses.
The US PIRG said it wants: Google to extend its ChromeOS update policy beyond current device expiration dates; hardware makers to make parts more available so their devices can be repaired; and hardware designs that enable easier part replacement and service. [...] According to US PIRG, making an average laptop releases 580 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, amounting to 77 percent of the total carbon impact of the device during its lifetime. Thus, the 31 million Chromebooks sold during the first year of the pandemic represent about 8.9 million tons of CO2e emissions. "We think that Google should extend the automatic update expiration to 10 years after launch date," said Lucas Gutterman, who leads US PIRG's Designed to Last campaign. "There's just no reason why we should be throwing away a computer that still is otherwise functional just because it passes a certain date."
"We're asking Google to use their leadership among the OEMs to design the devices to last, to make some of the changes that we list, to have them be more easily repairable by actually producing spare parts that folks can buy at reasonable prices," he added. "And to design with modularity and repair in mind, so that you can, for example, use the plastic bezel on one Chromebook on the next version, rather than having to buy a whole new set of spare parts just because a clip has changed."
Don't count in it (Score:5, Informative)
If there's one thing you can count on from Google, it's the notoriously short lifespan of everything they produce. Software, hardware, services, you name it.
IMO even Google's bread and butter, its search engine, has in many ways outlived its usefulness. The way it just arbitrarily ignores or silently replaces your search terms is downright infuriating. Yesterday I was looking for documentation on a certain keypad, and I couldn't find shit because it quietly figured "oh you really meant keyboard, so we'll search for that instead without telling you."
That whole company has gone to shit.
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so we'll search for that instead without telling you
Not sure which google site you're using, but Google doesn't substitute keywords without a warning that it did so right above the top search result.
"Showing results for keyboard"
"Search instead for keypad"
Let me guess, you were so desperate to scroll down the search results you didn't bother reading what was searched for.
Re:Don't count in it (Score:4, Interesting)
It does include variations of the search terms however, without any obvious way to avoid it.
For example, searching for "deposed [google.com]" includes "depose" in the search results, meaning all of the results on the first page for me are about definitions for either "deposed" or (mainly) "depose".
If I include "deposed" in quotation marks, the results are slightly different - still mostly definitions for either "deposed" or "depose", but now I have two results for a recent news article about someone being deposed. I have to actually go to the second page for it to become about people being deposed.
With these results, there is no "showing results for..." either, and the only option you get is "Overview", "Similar and opposite words", or "Usage examples".
Google is literally acting as a dictionary first rather than a search engine.
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That used to work flawlessly, but now Google often just ignores what you specify with a boolean. Modern day Google search, just like most things on the internet, is about pushing products to you, not about helping you get what you need. Search results are driven solely by monetization. If you searched for "automobiles NOT SUV" but the algorithm thinks it would be more profitable to push SUV results to you, SUV results you will get. Google search is nearing the point of uselessness.
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Since their search uses data relationships, they normalize word forms. Depose and deposed are the same word in their system.
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Google is literally acting as a dictionary first
If you don't understand why variable tense should be included in search results then it sounds like you could really use a dictionary. This is one of Google's better features and has literally existed like this for 2 decades.
Re: Don't count in it (Score:2)
Not sure which google site you're using, but Google doesn't substitute keywords without a warning that it did so right above the top search result.
"Showing results for keyboard"
"Search instead for keypad"
It depends on your exact search terms, but you don't always get that. Furthermore, it'll also just drop keywords from your search and the only way you find out is by doing exactly what you're "guessing" I'm doing, because they only mention it next to individual search results NOT at the top of the page. Literally the only way to get exactly what you want, and make sure nothing at all gets dropped, is to surround every word in quotes.
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It's bad because most chromebooks are simply under-spec'ed PCs. They're cheap PCs capable of running a browser and that's it, but for a lot uses, that's all they need to do.
How long can a modern midrange PC do this simple task? I'm sure at least 10 years if not more
Sure, you can hack them to do it - it's not hard, but they make it inconvenient, and really, there's no reason to.
My Chromebook expired years ago, but it's still useful with an i5 and 4GB of RAM. Sure it won't be fast fast fast, but I'm sre it ca
Re: Don't count in it (Score:2)
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OTOH, if it was fine last year, it's probably fine this year as long as the security updates can be applied. Let the replacements happen if and when external requirements force the issue rather than doing it by planned obsolescence.
For many schools it's the difference between having something that more or less gets the job done and filling the dumpster and going back to chalk boards.
Side note, I don't care what the new WiFi standards may be, the school will probably still be using the APs they bought 10 yea
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An advantage that isn't in the budget doesn't exist. Last year, you had 20 devices in the classroom. This year you have 20 devices in the classroom. The kids aren't supposed to be on their phones anyway, so the school isn't going to spend money to enable mis-behavior in class.
During COVID, many school systems got either special one time allocations to enable remote learning or pulled the funds out of building maintenance since there was nobody in them anyway. That money is gone now. They either need to keep
Re: Don't count in it (Score:2)
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Even so, the point remains, they already have the APs and they already cover the needed devices. Where do you live that schools can afford to just toss out old equipment and buy all new because the spec has been updated?
Re: Don't count in it (Score:2)
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That wasn't the question. The question was where do you live that schools can afford to just toss everything out and buy again because the spec was updated?
The key word is UPDATED. You named specs that were deprecated and then discontinued.
Of course, if software updates are available, tls can be trivially updated and needn't cost anything but time to do it.
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I'm still trying to find out a good use for the Chromebook I bought last year. Yeah, it can show YouTube videos, but it isn't even a particularly good box for that purpose, and if the security patches weren't up to date, I wouldn't even trust it for that purpose.
Nor is it the "best" box for that purpose. I have yet to find any purpose for which the Chromebook is my best tool. Learning to use the tool is a recursive function of very limited usefulness... And I already have too many tools and toys to play wit
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To be fair, very few manufacturers support their laptops for more than 8 years, or even more than the 5 years minimum that Google does. Try getting replacement parts for a 6 year old HP or Dell.
Often they lock things like the WiFi card down so you can't just put a generic replacement in too. It's a legal requirement for having really good antennas - they have to make sure the user can't install a card that would exceed the legal power limits.
Google should do better of course. But is this Google hardware? Mo
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Often they lock things like the WiFi card down so you can't just put a generic replacement in too. It's a legal requirement for having really good antennas - they have to make sure the user can't install a card that would exceed the legal power limits.
I'm sceptical of that claim: regulations certainly don't specify that it should be impossible to violate the rules given arbitrary user modification. Nothing prevents users from putting an illegal USB wifi dongle into a USB port, and the manufacturer won't be
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The theory is that any USB dongles on sale in the country will be legal, but of course these days you can just order one off AliExpress.
Actually I just had a new router sent over because I'm switching ISP. I wasn't going to use it but I took a look anyway, and it lets you select WiFi channel 13 on 2.4GHz, which is not allowed in the UK. Wondering if I can be bothered to email them about it.
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Yeah I think you are right, 14 is the problem one. My mistake.
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Wouldn't the same theory apply to wifi cards though?
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The card and the antennas are separate. In a dongle you get both, in a laptop the antennas are usually wires that go around the screen. They want the antennas to be as good as possible for reception, but that means they can also potentially radiate too much energy if a high power card is connected to them.
There are other issues too like the number of antennas in MIMO configuration. Beam forming can exceed the maximum power limit if the card isn't configured to respect it.
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I still don't buy that's regulated: my desktop takes any wifi cards and the one in there has antenna sockets. It's an Intel card I think. They can sell an unlocked PC with an unlocked card and I can plug in any antenna that I like.
Are laptop cards actually extra regulated or is that an assumption manufacturers claim in order to excuse locking?
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Sure, you can use any antenna, but the one supplied with it must be suitable. As I said, it's not really a good rule anymore, but I've had to do it in the past with various products I've designed. Some of the customers complained, like the French have unusually narrow and deep utility holes for water so they like to use a bit of coax with the end stripped to form an antenna. This was before brexit so we had to send them the antennas anyway to cover ourselves with respect to stuff like the CE mark.
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So really no reason the laptop can't have a user replaceable card or antenna as long as what you actually ship is compliant.
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I mean I get what you're saying, but what I could never figure out is if that was just a arse covering best guess at the rules or an actual rule. Last time I did it commercially, I found it to basically be a swamp of vagueness either way. I thought for kit that if it's not supplied with an antenna, that's fine, but it's on the user to use a suitable one, likewise antennas can be shipped without knowledge of the piece of equipment that will be used.
Sub assembly rules? Or am I mixing up FCC with CE? It's been
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It's been a while for me too, but from memory there are exceptions for certain kinds of equipment like lab stuff where it couldn't reasonably be locked down like that. Maybe you could argue it for laptops but there is little incentive for the manufacturer to do that.
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I just did a quick search for "PCIe WiFi card" and found countless hits on Amazon, all with external antenna using standard connectors.
It really does look like the whole "regulatory requirements" thing is a BS excuse for a dirty practice.
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For most of those laptops, the relevant support lifetime was not the hardware support from the vendor, but the software support by Microsoft for the Windows operating system on them. Until the recent mess with Windows 11 and Microsoft dropping support for 10 years worth of computers, many of which remain useful, Microsoft had been very good about continuing to support older systems; most computers produced since 2008 will run Windows 10. Some netbooks are exceptions, either because they use one specific lin
put Linux on em (Score:3)
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Re: put Linux on em (Score:3)
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Re: put Linux on em (Score:2)
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Disposable hardware makes me cringe. Build2last! (Score:3)
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Exactly the sort of young whippersnapper comment to expect from a 7-digit UID, eh?
Signed,
Old Whippersnapped.
But seriously folks, the problem is that the Internet has become a remarkably dangerous place, computers are much less useful unless they are connected to the Internet, and therefore the security updates, especially for the OS, are no longer optional. Where the OS intersects the hardware, things become problematic because the value of old hardware is low and sinking. Someone has to pay the piper...
(Sh
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Exactly the sort of young whippersnapper comment to expect from a 7-digit UID, eh?
I was like 732 or something close for my UID like that before usa.net shut down. Couldn't recover the account after a period of inactivity. There are a lot of old timers who have cycled to new ID's or lost old ones. If that's your only judgement criteria of folks, you're missing a lot.
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That part was supposed to be a joke. Your content was sufficient evidence that you were not a real whippersnapper. Perhaps a misguided Commodore fanatic, but not an actual whippersnapper.
But I wouldn't recognize I'd written a funny joke if it bit me...
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Manufacured Obsolescence (Score:2)
What we need here is a class action lawsuit... All customers vs Google.
Re:Manufacured Obsolescence (Score:4)
That's a great way of achieving nothing. Not only does this only enrich lawyers but it's also not one Google would lose. They will just rightfully point to competitors and replacement programs for hardware in corporations, schools, and how long iPads last as evidence that they are doing what is expected of industry.
It's shitty, but that's the sad fact. Schools and companies were replacing devices every 5 years long before Google introduced the idea of an OS with a use-by date, and long before MS started updating Windows on a cadence faster than a decade.
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What is needed is very strong right to repair laws with real teeth in them.
Planned obsolescence is anti-social behavior, especially when DIY work-arounds are made unnecessarily hard.
Lessons learned the hard way (Score:3)
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These Google and Apple computers that are designed to go in the trash can after a handful of years are disgusting and insulting.
Why are you spuriously throwing Apple in there? They're not mentioned in the story, and my 2015 MacBook Pro is eligible to update to an OS still receiving security updates.
Re:Lessons learned the hard way (Score:4)
Because we're talking about schools and no schools use MacBook Pros, they use iPads and your 2015 iPad is definitely not eligible for an update to the latest OS nor is it receiving security updates.
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your 2015 iPad is definitely not eligible for an update to the latest OS nor is it receiving security updates.
The iPad Pro 12.9-inch (1st generation) was released in November 2015 and is still supported by the latest iPadOS (16.4). Source [apple.com]. In addition, the iPad Air 2 (released October 2014) and the iPad Mini 4 (released September 2015) still receive regular security updates via iPadOS 15. Three further models, released as early as November 2013, still receive occasional security updates, the last released in January 2023.
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It's more than 7 years old. That makes it "vintage" meaning Apple won't fix it even if you pay them the click is already ticking for Monterrey to stop getting security updates.
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Much worse will happen soon will 1 billion PCs (Score:1)
Microsoft will end public support for Windows 10 on May 14, 2024.
Windows 11 only supports PCs that have specific requirements that have only been widely available since mid-2016 (such as TPM 2.0).
Between 2010 and 2016, there were 300 million PCs sold per year, or a total of 2 billion PCs sold, most of them with Windows.
Probably half of these PCs still work perfectly. If they are properly optimized, their power is still more than enough for most home uses: browsing, watching videos, reading emails, playing s
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We need a browser that runs on old OSes (Score:5, Interesting)
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but imagine going furtther and having one of the latest Chromium, Gecko or Webkit browsers running on 20-30 year old devices
Uah, no thanks. I'm not keen to go back to the days of Windows XP where software development on such a long cadence eventually completely outclassed the hardware and computers started running like molasses. Running new software on ancient hardware is what gave computers in the late 00s a reputation for being slow and painful to use.
Hard pass. I still have an older computer here that does run the latest Chrome, and no I don't do it, 2 tabs open and the entire thing grinds to a halt.
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Computers from the 2000's were still seeing leaps and bounds of single-threaded performance improvements every year. Those times are over. My current PC is 11 years old and still runs modern stuff just fine.
What makes everything slow is the 5MB JavaScript frameworks that power all the damned ads and telemetry, doing 200 round trips over the network. Fuck that noise.
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Computers from the 2000's were still seeing leaps and bounds of single-threaded performance improvements every year. Those times are over. My current PC is 11 years old and still runs modern stuff just fine.
How much of those gains were wiped out by patching for Spectre?
I use several old computers myself but noticed a fairly significant performance degradation after all the patching for Spectre and similar CPU flaws.
Re:We need a browser that runs on old OSes (Score:4, Insightful)
the latest Chromium, Gecko or Webkit browsers running on 20-30 year old devices that are continuously fixed under the right to repair, under Windows as far back as 95 or MacOS as far back as System7
This is a silly goal. Even if we had browsers that could do it, websites themselves wouldn't run on those machines. You'd have all kinds of timeouts happening as the hardware tries to compile the fifty or so JS libraries that underpin it's UI model.
The big problem on x86 is the requirement for SSE2 and SSE3, which while can boost performance on compatible devices, unfairly excludes processors without
Because you need big wide data buckets with fast pipelines to optimize a lot of JS engines, do HTTP/3 requests with multiplexed QUIC. On ARM you need their NEON [arm.com] or SVE [arm.com]. Unless the website in question does HTTP/1 non-TLS 1.3 and is REALLY light on javascript, you just don't have enough horsepower to render a website. I mean, you have just as good a chance to run Crysis on a Power Mac 8100 from 1995. I mean, I don't know how to break it to people, but modern websites take a shit ton of power to actually render. This isn't Geocities anymore.
With all the unemployed programmers out there why not put your skills to the common good and let us use our old hardware and operating systems
What profit motive is there in this? Nobody is really going to work on it. Hell, Microsoft stopped trying to write a browser and they make all kinds of money. Writing an HTML5 compliant web browser is a massive undertaking second to maybe writing an entire OS kernel with all the bells and whistles. HTML5 has a LOT of things that it provides. And for the people who'd do it, just to enjoy things, everyone bitches at them for removing their XUL plugin stuff, so not many people like working on it in their freetime because the community is toxic as hell. And many more have moved on to greener pastures like Gopher (yes there's groups still writing new server and clients for that protocol), [Titan/Spartan/Gemini] (Sort of like a Gopher 2.0), and Finger (All the craze in the really nerdy community) and so forth. The Web is for the corporations now, there's little to no joy in doing anything in it.
Also Apple should be required to let people update Safari on so called "obsolete" iPhones and iPads
Why? Don't buy their shit. That's how we solve this. We're not going to pressure companies to write code they don't want to write, so fuck it. Just don't buy their shit. We keep allowing Google and Apple to have the monopolies they have. We're the cause of the shit we're all here bemoaning. And the fact of the matter is this. Most people, like a very significant majority of people on this planet, do not agree with you on this point. They want the latest shiny, they want to have the most up-to-date, up to date. It's a status thing that's stuck in their heads and yapping "facts and logic" isn't going to persuade them otherwise. NOW, maybe in another five years of soaring inflation people will actually stop their rapacious consumerism and might want to actually want to hold on to things for long term time frames. I get it, us here at Slashdot, we love holding on to things for 20 - 30 years. It's almost a badge of honor. But most people are not like that.
Web browsers need a ton of horse power to run and old ass hardware is going to struggle big time trying to keep up. It's literally a lack of transistors and you cannot software update that. And if you try at add-on carding your way to add hardware acceleration for TLS1.3, for multiplexed HTTP, etc... You're just doing a modern CPU with way more extra steps. And people don't like old and busted. Hell they don't like things that
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Most people, like a very significant majority of people on this planet, do not agree with you on this point. They want the latest shiny, they want to have the most up-to-date, up to date.
I don't agree with that, or at least not convinced. For me at least its not the most shinny but its you don't even know what is good, what is going to last how are you even supposed to tell. Its not that I can find a device or anything that tells me it will last 20 years. All the readily available information I have is its cheap, and its shinny so what am I going to choose based on.
You might choose on brand name, but that doesn't work now either since there are too many exact same products that simply have
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Because you need big wide data buckets with fast pipelines to optimize a lot of JS engines, do HTTP/3 requests with multiplexed QUIC. On ARM you need their NEON [arm.com] or SVE [arm.com].
What the hell are you talking about?
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Why?
Because forced obsolescence is bad for the environment. I don't buy Apple crap but that doesn't stop other people from generating a shit ton of unnecessary e-waste. Thankfully we have people who make laws finally putting an end to this shit. Apple will be required to allow side loading, so finally they will have a good, privacy respecting browser that won't mysteriously run out of security updates at the point Apple have decided it wants more money from you and to hell with the e-waste.
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Dude, web sites barely run on modern browsers. I can't believe how much stuff I encounter that barely works on Firefox, let alone my daily driver, PaleMoon.
What really needs to happen is for the web development community to have a Renaissance and stop building sites with 5MB of JavaScript. In that case, a 20-year-old browser should work just fine. My own web site still works just fine in IE7, and that's without me giving a toss to specifically support it.
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My own web site still works just fine in IE7, and that's without me giving a toss to specifically support it.
What's your website? I'm curious to see how you achieve the level of interaction and features of a modern (yes even ad/tracking-free!) website, while still working in IE7 and presumably being lightweight.
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The biggest problem that you would face with systems that old is that their RAM ceiling is too low. If you want a system that is usable on the modern web, 2 GB RAM is an absolute minimum, 4 GB is better (and is the minimum system requirement for Windows 11), and 8 GB is what it really takes to be somewhat comfortable. Computers from the Windows 98 era usually top out somewhere between 512 MB and 1 GB; systems from the Windows 95 era will accept even less RAM. And you'll have to hit the used market to find R
"Does this Chromebook taste funny?" (Score:3)
The label says it's past its "Best by" date, but can you tell the difference?
slight clarification seems in order (Score:2)
If I remember correctly (and unless they changed this) the support removed after 5-8 years is for the OS. The browser (which is the really important thing on a Chromebook) continues to get updates forever and ever until the hardware can't support it anymore (which is going to be a while, most likely).
Meanwhile, I am also wondering why Google is catching heat about this, since before Chromebooks there was basically nothing like them available at all (and certainly not at that price). Selling cheap computers
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Nope. "The browser is the OS." My Ace C731 from September 2017 reached "end of life" last fall and no longer receives browser updates, despite being perfectly serviceable.
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My wife's C720 reached its EOL in 2019 (released 2013). I put Linux on it and it works as a a hi-fi interface in my living room now. It's pretty slow for web browsing, but that haswell celeron is a dog (and 2gb RAM) but works for what we use it for. That's one big issue with reusing these, at least the older ones. The specs when they were released were the absolute low end, so they just aren't very future-proof.
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Something I have found that improves things is not to rely on the internal storage. Use an SD card for any user files, and set the system to use a large amount of swap. Since the built-in storage is an SSD, even if not a high end NVME, it helps quite a bit.
Planned Obsolescence vs. HAAS (Score:2)
I'd love to just have Hardware As A Service. At least then I'd know if I'm "buying" a 3 year device, a 5 year device, or...
As it is, you have to see when your favorite phone/tablet/laptop model was introduced and make guesses about the future corporate whim.
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I'd love to just have Hardware As A Service.
It's called renting or hiring depending on which dialect of English you speak.
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How long do Chromebooks last, in practice? (Score:2)
They're mostly used by schoolkids. Are they really going to survive 10 years?
Maybe if schools keep repairing them, but over 10 years that will cost more than buying a new (and better) laptop.
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I think the answer is held in the battery. Li-Ion or Li-Po packs are good for around 1000 cycles so plan for maybe 3-4 years of regular use. Newer formulations are coming but they're starting out in EVs first. They can go 5000-10000 cycles. The rest of the stuff lasts almost indefinitely, if you over-provision the flash storage to extend the wear-leveling abilities.
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I was going to say. No school is getting 10 years out of their Chromebooks. Not even close. They do well to get 3, given the cycle of abuse the devices are subjected to.
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These things get beat to shit by the students. After a few years of abuse they need to be replaced. It is just a fact. We should expect kids to need 2-3 over the course of gradeschool & highschool. What is needed is a plan for recycling them at end-of-life.
Google, as the manufacturer, should be required to take responsibility for the end-of-life of the product. Design the product to be recycled. Operate recycling centers that break down and recycle the component materials. Hold Google responsible
1.5kg of waste oh dear! (Score:2)
We want more for the same price (Score:2)
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That's fine - so after EOL, open it up and let community maintain it. Don't just tell me to take a hike.
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They are.
ChromeOS is Linux based, you can run the open source ChromiumOS variant on these devices if you want to.
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Sure, _I_ can. Linux Desktop or a Google Flex.
How many 'normal' users will though?
Wonder why postal trucks and fighter planes (Score:2)
don't come off the shelf and cost so much up front?
Sustainment clauses in the contracts. It turns out that committing to make spare parts that keep something operational for decades ain't cheap.
It sounds like what the school districts want is something that takes advantage of COTS by letting commercial sales pay for software and hardware development but also something that is a locked down and fixed design that can be sustained and repaired for decades plus.
The military has yet to figure out how to do this
Surely they knew this when they purchased them (Score:2)
I reject your reality, and substitute my own (Score:3)
As a technology director in a public K-12 who manages a fleet of over 1200 Chromebooks annually, I find these complaints baseless and not reflective of real-world experience. Let me break it down for you.
Google stops providing updates after five to eight years.
Google did stop providing updates to Chromebooks after five years. Now every new Chromebook on the market that I've seen has an eight-year lifespan after its debut. And "expired" Chromebooks still work; they don't self-destruct, they just don't update. Theoretically, you could use a brand new Chromebook today for up-to ten years. (If you buy older models with older processors, -then- you get less life. The end-of-life date on a Chromebook is determined mainly by its processor's release date, not the Chromebook sale-date.)
""We think that Google should extend the automatic update expiration to 10 years after launch date,..There's just no reason why we should be throwing away a computer that still is otherwise functional just because it passes a certain date."
Come to my office and look at what happens to a Chromebook after four years of use by students. Very, very few would last an entire ten years. Four years of wear-and-tear is plenty for a Chromebook. At our school, we go through all Chromebooks that are returned after four years, and sort the best from the rest, and keep those for two more years in the classroom as spares, as well as for state testing.
Also, by year-5 of a Chromebook's life, the batteries are terrible.
Chromebooks don't last as long as they should, because ...device repairability is hindered by the scarcity of spare parts and repair-thwarting designs.
Now this is just utter BS. Chromebooks are very repairable. My district alone replaces about 70 broken LCD screens a year, which accounts for 90% of all repairs. In fact, we gutted over 200 LCD screens from our old Dell 3120's and are still using them to replace broken screens in our newer 3100's. If that's not repairability, then what the hell is?
Chromebooks have five parts that account for practically all the repairs: the LCD, the keyboard, the battery, the casing, and the motherboard. The only thing that's practically not repairable is the motherboard...but it's certainly replaceable, and I've replaced plenty of them.
The US PIRG said it wants: Google to extend its ChromeOS update policy beyond current device expiration dates; hardware makers to make parts more available so their devices can be repaired; and hardware designs that enable easier part replacement and service.
Conditions 2 & 3 already exist, because the hardware manufacturers have made it possible. Google has practically no say in the matter. (Google was responsible for leading manufacturers to adopt USB-C for charging.) Other than that, it's left to the computer manufacturers.
"The 31 million Chromebooks sold globally in the first year of the pandemic represent approximately 9 million tons of CO2e emissions,"
Oh, you want to blame Google for global warming? Why don't you blame the entire tech industry for manufacturing this kind of waste instead? Or blame the school boards that decide for districts to buy these machines? Or why don't you blame all the people that keep buying new technology to begin with, as they keep upgrading? Would it be better if we were all instead using 386 desktops running DOS and using Lotus 1-2-3 for word processing?
These demands are just stupidity at their finest.
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Many of the old Chromebooks leave being still enrolled and are "unlockable".
I have to get them on eBay, exploit their firmware, install an open source BIOS, then install the ChromeOS for PC's.
It's silly. They're still fine for underprivileged kids who appreciate the gift.
In-house they're fine Debian machines too. Keep your security zones separate.
Google should charge a license fee for each enrolled machine to align incentives for the environment. But that's not good for their profits so they won't. It wo
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Thank you for the informative and insightful posting of real-world experiences.
Just the keys please... (Score:1)
5-8 years is a pretty relaxed replacement cycle. (Score:3)
Second, the typical enterprise hardware cycle is 4-5 years for workstations, 5-6 for servers. The basic, Moore's Law-driven, lifecycle is 5 years. After 6 years, it isn't worth repairing. 10-year-old hardware is worthless.
So, what is the PRIG saying? Google is bad for recognizing reality and basing their support policies on it? That our kids should all be using decade-old hardware? That what schools buy should cost more to fund an already absurd ten-year lifecycle?
Nonsense.
Are they nuts? (Score:1)