Chromebook expiration date, repair issues 'bad for people and planet' 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. In a report on Tuesday, titled "Chromebook Churn," US PIRG contends that Chromebooks don't last as long …
"Chrome OS devices made by our manufacturing partners consume up to 46 percent less energy than comparable devices and are designed with sustainability in mind — from their durable shells to their scratch-resistant glass,"
OK, so don't be evil - replace the old ones with new as a product recall.
But that wouldn't be profitable enough.
You may sign a "support" contract for your devices. Only, the costs of the "support" contract is higher than the costs of throwing it all away and buy new devices.
Remember, the "environment" has no price. Or have you seen price labels growing on trees?
/s
MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT: Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt leaves as legal tender, we have, of course all become immensely rich.
FORD: No really? Really?
CROWD MEMBERS: Yes, very good move…
MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT: But, we have also run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability. Which means that I gather the current going rate has something like three major deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut. So, um, in order to obviate this problem and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on an extensive defoliation campaign, and um, burn down all the forests. I think that’s a sensible move don’t you?
MARKETING GIRL: That makes economic sense.
From my experience of working in a local education authority ICT dept we used to lease the equipment out for a maximum of 5 years, as that is how long a Dell Windows laptop would last for before it wanted replacing. We never had Chromebooks so can't comment on those but they are still a laptop so likely to get the same sort of failures that the Windows ones would get. Keyboards, fans, screens, drives and touchpads starting to fail. USB and charging ports broken, and of course batteries not holding a charge anymore.
Schools are harsh environments for laptops, desktop PCs used to fair much better than the laptops but that is because of their more modular nature which meant that components are easier to replace if they fail. But schools were moving away from wanting suites of PCs on desks to a using laptops which can be moved around and used in any class room or the kids can take out of the school.
"desktop PCs used to fair much better than the laptops but that is because of their more modular nature which meant that components are easier to replace if they fail. But schools were moving away from wanting suites of PCs on desks to a using laptops which can be moved around"
Being able to be moved around is the problem. Laptops are more prone to damage, theft and loss in addition to being more difficult or impossible to service. I don't see why it isn't better to have desktop computers in the classrooms where they are relevant and students have a 'cloud' account where their work and other documents are stored. Even a customized desktop configuration could be downloaded when a student logs in. On the home side, if it were more advantageous for companies to donate their used kit to schools, those computers could be made available at a low cost or even free depending on the needs of the student. A tax credit of £200-£300 per computer for the donation could make it a really nice deal. If it's just "market" price which could be £25, it might be less expensive for a company to just have a pallet of unneeded computers hauled away instead. When one considers the entire acquisition cost for a computer being purchased by government, what seems to be a high donation credit is dirt cheap.
I mainly work on a Mac or Linux machine, but I also have a couple of PC's for particular applications that I've acquired for free. The PC's are older but should be more than adequate for a student if the student software they need to run isn't dependent on the absolute latest OS, graphics, etc. In fact, student software should be written to run under an OS that's a few revisions back so schools can take advantage of donated hardware more readily.
"I don't see why it isn't better to have desktop computers in the classrooms where they are relevant and students have a 'cloud' account where their work and other documents are stored."
The problems are for the courses where you don't need a computer at all times, but they are useful at least some of the time. If you put desktops in the rooms for those courses, you'll be using a lot of the space for machines that aren't frequently used. If you make everyone go to a room with computers in it whenever they're needed, you may have to move some stuff every time you do so and you're still reserving a relatively scarce resource now that rooms have to be provisioned. You could try to eliminate the second case as much as possible, but if you don't do that, the desktop solution probably won't be as efficient as portable devices. I haven't been in a school for a bit, but they're still trying to figure out how much they should change because nearly every job is now done with a computer at least nearby.
"The problems are for the courses where you don't need a computer at all times, but they are useful at least some of the time."
I'd say that the syllabus would need to be rewritten to eliminate classroom computer use completely or it could be enough to have a few shared computers in the room. I went through school and uni when computers were chunky boxes and the closest thing to a laptop were the giant "luggables". I seemed to have received an education that worked out ok. The world has changed, but the fundamentals haven't. Computers are a good adjunct to some courses but it's also a good idea to learn proper spelling before relying on a spell checker and auto-correction all of the time. The same goes for every topic.
I'm pretty fortunate to have a very large engineering library at home. I've always liked physical books. I still use those books frequently and add to the collection. That doesn't mean I'm not looking things up on the computer as well, but often enough I come across older items where there is no online information or it's behind a paywall and I have no idea if its the information I need to completely useless unless I give them money. When I was working in aerospace, the wall next to my desk was covered in tables and charts. If I needed the density of 6061 Aluminum, I just look to the right. The same for wire gauges/capacities and all sorts of other stuff. I could look it up online, but having a reference book on my desk or a chart on the wall was faster and both worked if the internet was down.
Fun activity(*): ask a group of normal well-adjusted adults to come up with a list of what every 16 year old should know about maths.
The result will be a shopping list of topics including mental arithmetic and paper and pencil arithmetic. Often impassioned diatribes against the use of calculators.
So then ask when they last did a long multiplication sum. Or added some fractions.
Then ask when they last did a rough estimate of how much paint they needed, or measured a window for curtains, or scaled a recipe...
The result is puzzlement, confusion and a slow realisation that mathematical thinking is not just arithmetic.
(*)Ice breaker for adult basic education maths classes. Never fails)
In the US, such a question is likely to lead into very different diatribes--try an internet search for "San Francisco" and "high school mathematics".
Calculators are great, but an intuition for the rough size of the results is a useful check on them, or rather on the results of one's entry of the factors. Long ago I met a middle-school teacher who allowed her students to use calculators in class, but only if they periodically passed pencil-and-paper tests.
(I do from time to time roughly estimate the paint I need, add fractions, scale recipes. The only part of all this I dread is the prep work for the painting.)
Calculators are great, but an intuition for the rough size of the results is a useful check on them, or rather on the results of one's entry of the factors.
I can't emphasize that too highly. Generating a feel for numbers, and an ability to do Fermi estimation and general estimation are incredibly important for numerate life-skills.
Being able to do mental arithmetic at a basic level allows you work out if you have been short-changed or not; or received an advertised discount correctly.
Given how many people find filling in tax returns and comparing pension, mortgage, and investment finances, I think that training in all four should be mandatory in schools. Is an investment return of 10% p.a over 5 years better than 5% p.a. over 10 years? What if the management charges are 0.01% per month compared to 0.1% per annum? What is your marginal increase in income if your 100 pound per month pay increase takes you over the National Insurance threshold? If your pension pot is 70,000 pounds, would an annuity offering 10,000 pounds per annum until you die be a good deal if you were 70? What about if you were 80? If your credit card APR is 25% per annum, is it a good idea to take money on credit and put it in a savings account offering 1% per month?
This is all stuff people are expected to understand.
@disgruntled and all the posters on this little sub-thread
"Calculators are great, but an intuition for the rough size of the results is a useful check on them, or rather on the results of one's entry of the factors"
Bingo!
But just try substituting 'arithmetic algorithm' in the sentence above for 'calculator'. Drop one figure, or forget to cross out a carry and add it twice, or forget to put the zero down and it all goes pear shaped, just like fat-fingering the buttons on a calculator.
Even more fun: find the one person in the class who can actually work out something like 457 x 31 correctly first time and ask them to explain why each step works...(you have to be careful with that one and be prepared to scaffold the answers)
So the rest of my lesson goes into estimation techniques and how to stand back and see if the answer is plausible. And place notation and all that stuff.
Icon: more measuring and weighing things and colouring squares to make patterns and making 3d shapes in primary school. Bring back Spirographs and turtles (the ones with motors and pens)... as well as the tables and arithmetic.
"So the rest of my lesson goes into estimation techniques and how to stand back and see if the answer is plausible"
Super life skill if you want to keep from getting ripped off and short changed.
I learned how to count back a person's change and rip them off unless they at least estimated what they should get back without listening to me talk. My mom thought I'd wind up in jail, but I never it to anybody myself and caught the trick a few times usually from cab drivers and they just apologized that they'd made a mistake and gave me the correct change when I called them out. Yeah, right! A mistake, sure.
It's also great in engineering and I estimate stuff all of the time to get me close to a correct answer. You know you've blown the test question when your answer has you going faster than light. Better look at it again.
"Calculators are great, but an intuition for the rough size of the results is a useful check on them, or rather on the results of one's entry of the factors. Long ago I met a middle-school teacher who allowed her students to use calculators in class, but only if they periodically passed pencil-and-paper tests."
My high school math teacher didn't allow calculators so me, being a right PIA, asked if I could bring a slide rule. I'm still pretty good on one. I learned so I could continue being a PIA and Marty was a fun teacher to have ( we weren't supposed to call him Marty, but did anyway).
"So then ask when they last did a long multiplication sum. Or added some fractions."
They may well use calculators to do that today but they'll have had to learn to do it manually in school, long ago. It's that manual calculation that gives some insight into what's happening. Without that the symbols on the keyboard and in the display are just peculiar squiggles. Learning to distrust electronically produced numbers is an essential part of learning to understand them.
Funny, as I've done all that in the last month, and just yesterday figured out how much concrete I need for porch footings. Came out to a very surprising 4 cubic yards when I expected to need maybe 1 cubic yard, so I need to remeasure and recalculate even though I know I did it correctly. No on the curtains, but did have to measure out flooring.
Used to do multiplication in my head up to 4 digits x 4 digits, as well as some light algebra, but my memory's gone to hell in my old age and by the time I get to the end I can't remember the start.
So then ask when they last did a long multiplication sum. Or added some fractions. ********** Today I added some fractions (damn imperial measurements).
Then ask when they last did a rough estimate of how much paint they needed, or measured a window for curtains, or scaled a recipe... ******I scaled a recipe 5 days ago. The recipe called for 2.1kg of Mandarin oranges for a batch of marmalade and I had 5.8kg. I now have a bunch of jars of really yummy marmalade that won't last long. Thanks gran! you taught me well.
I use a calculator, spreadsheets, etc all of the time as an adult. Thing important thing is I CAN do arithmetic and set up conversions and make quick estimates in my head. There were no electronic cash registers when I had my first jobs so I had to calculate change for purchases quickly and in my head. I was taught some techniques for that and still use them every time I go shopping. I can't tell you how often some PFY can't understand why I handed them 'too much money' for a purchase and I have to get them to punch it into the register and then the light goes on. Instead of a bunch of coin, I get back a five or a tenner. They then tell me that "math" is hard. Yes, it is, but arithmetic isn't, sheesh (insert eye roll).
Some years ago Yanni was playing a concert nearby and the lighting director and sound engineer were both old friends from my roadie days so I went early to the venue to say hi. I wound up getting roped into translating the US stage plot which was all in imperial measurements into the more rational metric system for the Japanese advance team that was at the show to get the info they needed when the tour hit Japan. I knew that 1" = 24.5mm. From there the whole world opens out into vast expanses of beauty. No, I didn't do drugs, but I did get some free tickets, after show passes and a tour crew laminate (worthless as it was the last date in the US). Not a bad show, but not my mug of beer.
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And who is responsible for making sure the donated electrical device is safe to use? Who picks up the bill if one goes bang and catches fire? This is why very few charity shops will take electrical goods as donations. Someone has to do a PAT or the fear of "insurance" (disguised as 'elf'n'safety) repercussion bounce around insise the heads of people in power.
About the only time a school,can accept that sort of donation is if it comes from a large organisation, properly certified and of well known brands and in a large enough quantity that the school doesn't end up with too wide a range of kit., ie each class or group all have the same kit and the school is big enough to have an IT team[*] who understand how to do their jobs well.
* at least two people. One person band IT support or worse, scheduled site visits from peripatetic shared IT support, can far to easily be overwhelmed by have multi-brand/model devices to maintain.
>companies to donate their used kit to schools,
Teachers. Instead of just rebooting a chromebook or handing a student a loaner machine out of the cupboard you are now administering a room of 30 Windows PCs.
But to make it more fun and challenging all these machines are donations so the whole classroom isn't the same model and they are also different from all the other classrooms
But the sense of achievement you get from debugging BIOS issues when a Dell model XYZ loses a backup battery or a Lenovo ZXY only puts boot message son the CPU HDMI port is why you got into teaching in the first place.
Unless this is all a brilliant education dept initiative to train an army of BOFHs who have already learned to hate all users by working with children for years
"But to make it more fun and challenging all these machines are donations so the whole classroom isn't the same model and they are also different from all the other classrooms"
The classrooms can have the same computers and OS and the donated units can go to students so all of them have a machine at home even if their parents can't afford to buy one. We're talking mainly word processing and the ability to visit web sites and exchange email, not fluid dynamics simulations.
I've never had the same make and model of computer at work that I have at home other than now and that's due to being self-employed. I don't see the problem with being able to work on different computers but I think your concern is more about support which many teachers can't do. I've seen comments that some computer requirements for a class are being manufactured when there isn't a good argument other than "write a syllabus that incorporates computers in the lessons" sort of thing.
"Teachers. Instead of just rebooting a chromebook or handing a student a loaner machine out of the cupboard you are now administering a room of 30 Windows PCs."
Wait, what? Who keeps the loaner machines in the cupboard going. I think that believing that all a Chromebook ever needs when it goes wrong is a reboot is wishful thinking. The classroom teacher is always going to be administering a class full computers, but with each student having their own, each class period is another batch of computers. (assuming we're talking about year 6 and up where students aren't in one classroom all day). When a dedicated PC at a desk inevitably goes sproing, the teacher swaps in a new one and hopefully has it. Networked SFF or shoebox models would be best.
"For South Kitsap, the constraining factor in end-of-life is that the publishers of our state testing software require specific (current) ChromeOS versions to run the clients," said Lyons.
There is incompetence or (and?) corruption on the part of the government agency which purchased and mandated testing software from this company, given this company's "only supported on the latest ChromeOS version" policy.
I was just going to post a similar comment. If they can't run the testing software, then buy the software from a vendor that will cooperate better with their customer. Or, god forbid, write it themselves! They could probably hire a couple of good developers for way less than they are paying the software company (especially if you deduct the cost of all of the kickbacks and backhanders that are usually involved).
The company is probably required to have unrealistic security constraints to prevent people from using cheating software*. This may be why they are so strict with the versions of components used to access the software. That is probably not justified, but I'd expect that to be the explanation if they ever provide one.
* Not that doing that prevents cheating, because a student could use something else to cheat and a typical attempt at cheating on the device is more likely to use a misconfiguration rather than a zero-day.
Probably laziness or cost cutting on the part of school test software developers. Surely this should run on the currently supported major versions of the OS, eg current and last two years on MacOS or windows 10 with whatever releases still get Windows Updates eg 21H1 or so.
To quote the article 1"Once a Chromebook goes end-of-life and is no longer eligible for OS updates, we have a very limited time before the device is no longer supported for state testing" which I read as "supported version of ChromeOS", not just the latest versions (depending on your definition of latest), so up to 8 years from release date which is probably longer than the life expectancy of the hardware in a school environment. Of course, if someone buys a new but near EOL ChromeBook that was first released to market 5 years ago, then they are not going to get 5 years of updates from it. Updates ought to be available for at least 5 years after the model is withdrawn from sale, which is a much better metric than 8 years from first going on sale. On the other hand, how long do these models remain on sale before being superseded by the next model?
PS, just noticed you got some downvotes. Wasn't me :-)
When I went to school, all we had were books. We could buy them new or used at the bookstore. Is that cheaper overall than computers? Who knows, it worked for me and I received an excellent education. To paraphrase the real estate mantra perhaps it was actually the “teachers,teachers,teachers”.
P.S. If you acted like an a**hole in class, you’d get a bonk on the head. None of this “can’t touch a student or it’s child abuse” nonsense. Class was always more productive when everyone behaved.
I remember one "creative" teacher. His punishment was to make you stand facing the wall on tiptoes with your arms stretched up so your fingertips were just preventing you falling forwards for about 15 minutes. Very few misbehaved in his class more than once. He'd probably be put in jail now.
Two comments that illustrate the massive improvement in education since then.
My own two are fortunate that they went to a modern school that suffered nowhere near the levels of disruption, violence and abuse that happened in my time and before.
Thank goodness they have technology now to boost the learning. There was nothing good about poorly equipped dumps of yesteryear with their bullying maggot teachers.
One of my French teachers was an uncannily good shot with the chalk.
He also had an easily ignited temper.
We knew that he was getting seriously worked up when he threw the wooden blackboard eraser* rather than the chalk. He had an equally good aim with either projectile.
It was a strong inducement to know your verbs.
*A varnished block of wood, the bottom of which was covered in felt to wipe most of the chalk off the blackboard and smear the rest around, and the top of which had a concave surface - Example from pinterest.
"it worked for me and I received an excellent education"
An "excellent" education now involves learning how to use Microsoft Office so as to fit pupils for the modern workplace because that's what's expected of educators. Those funny old books? It wouldn't be excellent by today's standards.
install Linux on your Chromebook, so all is not lost if the hardware is still OK.
Yes: it does mean that the nice, easy environment that the school bought into is not there but many pupils would be happy to buy their own machine and be capable of supporting it themselves. So the school could get some money back on an old machine.
Enterprising kids could even sell these "refurbished" machines to those with simple computing requirements, eg grand parents.
I agree that longer s/ware support lifetimes would be even better.
That's not installing Linux, that's just setting up the Linux container running under ChromeOS which the school might not even enable.
Wiping ChromeOS and installing a real Linux depends on the Chromebook model, it gets progressively more difficult the newer the model is.
I bought an Acer Chromebook in 2016 which had the "Parrot" motherboard, which included a set of jumpers posts which enabled me to reflash the EEPROM with SeaBIOS. It's also the only Chromebook I've seen which had all the proper IBM-compatible function keys.
Current Chromebooks have only 10 Fkeys, and no SysReq or PrtSc, etc. ... and ~probably~ are not re-flashable.
Chromebooks might look like laptops, but they are locked-down appliances meant to optimize revenue for Google. They display the whole playbook of marketing tricks, including but not limited to programmed obsolescence (as short as can legally and commercially be done).
"Enterprising kids could even sell these "refurbished" machines to those with simple computing requirements, eg grand parents."
You are assuming that these machines are being given outright to the students and that's not generally the case. Often times, the software/spyware is pre-loaded and can't be modified. School's are being called out more often for activating cameras unannounced and scanning messages between students (and are darn proud of it). If a kid replaced the main drive and installed linux, the laptop would no longer function for their school work as it would not interface to the school's network.
"Honestly schools should also be fined for showing no professional due diligence and buying the defective crap in the first place."
They've spent millions in outside consultants to show their "due diligence". What they haven't done is establish what's needed first. They just downloaded the Google White Paper telling them what they need.
I suppose that, along with all the other horseshit imposed on us by the Social Justice Warriors, it's not politically correct to call this for exactly what it is: corporate greed mixed in with an almost infinitely massive dose of stupidity.
It all starts, of course, with the "Education Experts"--starting at the very highest levels-- who don't know shit from Shinola about how to teach anything to anybody, and who have reverted to trying to convince us all that the "education problem" will be magically solved by the miraculous expedient of "using computers"--which, of course, they know absolutely nothing about--except that they will be told absolutely everything they need to know by the "technology experts"...like Google.
Now, not only can Johnny not read, but he cannot do simple arithmetic any more. Ain't "technology" wonderful?
Stupid, f**king, a**holes.
-----------------------------
“We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective.”
― Dave Barry
I've given up waiting for El Reg to mend its ways and am using Greasemonkey with an imperial-to-metric script. You need to make a small change to the script, search for "lbs?" and replace it with "lbs?|pounds?".
Look what you made me do, El Reg!
"A pint's a pound, the world around".
...except when it isn't, which seems to be the case in most places where pints are still used "traditionally" even after going metric. It might even be 500ml nowadays, about 1.1lbs :-)
ie a US pint is approx. a pound because it's so small compared to a UK Imperial pint, except it could be a US "dry" pint, which is bigger than a US liquid pint but still nor as big as an Imperial pint.
Hahaha
One litre water = 1kg
Those brought up with SI just sit back in amazement at how ridiculous imperial measurements are see this link just on length and we don't even talk about area or volume, nevermind acceleration, mass, energy or power.
https://www.theedkins.co.uk/jo/units/length.htm
I attended high school 70's where basic metric/english conversions were more often learned from dealers before any classes.
Halfway thru the first year most students knew a KG is approx 2.2 pounds, a pound is approx 454 grams and 1 ounce is approx 28.3 grams.
- useful keeping track of "pot".
Regardless, before widespread use of calculators/computers, math courses could be pretty tiresome for both teachers and students.
I know I was good at math all thru my primary education but... the drudgery of it!
Math only really started appealing to me after I had access to calculators became available AND... being exposed to engineering problems.
Personally I think computers/calculators can only help to get math into the young brains of today.... while they are still "spongy" .
Understand the sentiment here but... bit of a one sided dig at Google. Those who came before and exist today I.e Microsoft have done a great job at building in a 3 obsolescence cycle into hardware and software ,Google should be aaplauded or committing to 8 years as a starting point. Yes it's not good enough but it's better than most. of the vast swathes of power hungry tech required to trun your on premise or even cloud windows environments. I suspct rhat has more of a material impact on the environment than the end user devises themselves. Chromebook as part of the Google ecosystem makes sense it's not perfect it's a step in the right direction, could do more but the tone of this report doesn't seem that supportive or constructive and is probably focusing on the wrong thing
"Those who came before and exist today I.e Microsoft have done a great job at building in a 3 obsolescence cycle into hardware and software ,Google should be aaplauded or committing to 8 years as a starting point."
I can't tell if your 3 means three years or you made a typo somewhere. If you actually think there's anything like a three-year obsolescence cycle, I have no clue what you're talking about. Microsoft hasn't tended to cut off support historically, but they have demonstrated they're willing to now. However, that's not anywhere close to three years. I have recently installed Windows 10 on a computer with a Sandy Bridge (2012-era) processor. It runs and rather quickly. It gets updates. It will continue to get them until 2025. That's 13 years. That's not the oldest machine that can do that.
Google's promise is worse than you say for two reasons. First, it's not always eight years. It was originally 6.5 years, and they've extended it to only some models. That's 6.5 years from the original release date, not from the cancellation date. If a manufacturer is still selling devices they made in 2020, they get three years even though you're buying a newly-made device. More importantly, there is no technical reason for the expiration. When Windows cut off devices in the past, they didn't really cut them off; the device just wouldn't run well. That's the part that they've changed, and for reasons I don't believe, but their excuse is still technical requirements that they're building into their code. Newer Chromebooks don't have any technical advantage over the older versions; a new machine with a weak ARM processor will get updates, but one from a few years ago into which a much faster I7 or Ryzen was installed will be cut off. Nor does RAM, storage, or motherboard chip explain the difference. The only determiner for whether a device gets security is whether the manufacturer has permission to dump it. Google shouldn't be applauded for this; they had the choice to make the OS portable so they didn't have to do this, you know like Windows or Linux did, or they could have required manufacturers to have standards, and they not only chose to ignore both options but went with a ridiculously bad third option.
<quote>
I have recently installed Windows 10 on a computer with a Sandy Bridge (2012-era) processor.
</quote>
This is written on a white-box (i.e not branded PC) assembled in 1090-something, and happily running updated Linux, previously Minix.
Over the years expanded memory, replaced HDD. Next step probably SSD...
No reason to send it to landfill for at least a few more years
Why can't I do something similar for things marketed by Micro$oft or Google.
The next step might be to put me on an ice floe and push me out to sea when my memory or body parts start to fail
A/C for reasons
"Why can't I do something similar for things marketed by Micro$oft or Google."
That depends what your problems with those companies are. You can do that with several kinds of computer designed to run Windows. The machine I used as an example wasn't the oldest machine that could do it. It was just the one I installed Windows on a week ago. I could replace the storage and RAM, and the battery since this was a laptop. Switching out the processor wouldn't have been very easy though.
If you mean the Surface line from Microsoft, you can for a few of them, but many of them you can't because the hardware was designed to be thin with no thought put into repairability so a lot of them are quite difficult to take apart without breaking something.
As for Google, you can't because Google doesn't want you to. Even if the hardware allows you to replace components, you can only do that to repair the non-upgradable system, not to keep it running the latest software. That was my original complaint.
Maybe you noticed that I mentioned that several times in my comment? That it would be cut off from support in 2025, thus limiting the Windows life for that unit to 13 years? Maybe the fact that I complained about Microsoft not having a good reason for cutting it off?
The fact remains that, even for machines from 2016, that's longer than even the extended support for select Chromebook models that Google are providing. The other fact remains that, if I was motivated enough, I can make that laptop install Windows 11, because the hardware checks can be bypassed and the software will run. I don't think Microsoft should get any credit for that, which is why I'm perfectly content to yell at them for the 13-year cutoff, but try unlocking the support death dates on a Chromebook as easily as running a program on the Windows installation media which works for every model.
I mean for things like new versions of Windows. I can take a Windows 10 32-bit installation disk and install it on a 2000 Pentium. The installer won't prevent me, but it's not going to run very well. Their system requirements page will suggest that it's not going to work, but it actually does if you're willing to have weird and annoying latency with the mouse and keyboard. Windows 11 has changed this a bit because it now checks the requirements, but if you bypass that check, it still works as before. People have proven that by showing that Windows 11 installs and runs on hardware that completely fails the stated requirements. That doesn't get Microsoft off the hook for Windows, and they have some other bad examples (Windows Phone, for example), but anyone trying to claim that Chrome OS is better than Windows on this stuff either completely misunderstands the details or is biased.
Windows's hardware requirements were for technical reasons, and if you tried to ignore them, you could but you'd see the technical reasons. Google's expiration is not for technical reasons, and if you try to ignore them, you can't because they check where Windows did not. The only bypass solutions that might work are invasive, possibly unsupported, and very device-specific.
In order to put Chrome OS Flex onto a Chromebook, you have to replace the bootloader first. It's not difficult, but it does involve cracking the case open and mucking about a bit. Hardware support can be a problem, as Flex's driver library is limited. I've seen mixed results, depending on what model Chromebook was involved.
Do these sustainability folks understand math?
When they make statements like "making an average laptop releases 580 pounds of carbon dioxide... amounting to 77 percent of the total carbon impact ... during its lifetime", do they consider how utterly meaningless that percentage is? Pounds: fine. Percentage of total: stupid.
Think about it. If a device used ZERO energy to operate, the act of making it would emit 100% of the total carbon footprint, and that would be the best possible machine if manufacturing CO2 impact is all the same. And, a truly inefficient device that used huge sums of electricity could boast that their manufacturing CO2 emissions are only 10% of the lifetime total impact, even as their device produces outrageous amounts of CO2 when operating.
Obviously extending the useful lifespan of ANY electronic device will be a good thing. But, implying that a high percentage of total CO2 impact from just device manufacture is bad is actually just bad math. Comparing such percentages is useless. Total CO2 lifetime impact in actual C02 kilograms emitted is all that matters.
"Percentage of total: stupid"
Not really, because what they are pointing out is that energy efficiency during use is only part of the equation when it comes to environmental impact. In this particular case knowing that 77 percent of the equation is production related tells us that making the average laptop last twice as long will do more to help the environment than producing devices which use half the energy. If, instead of 77% the number were 15%, we would know that halving the devices' energy consumption would be the more environmentally beneficial goal.
"Total CO2 lifetime impact in actual C02 kilograms emitted is all that matters."
That is actually the point they were making. They were contesting Googles claim that Chromebooks use "up to 46% less energy". The "sustainability folks" were making the point that the 46% less is 46% less of a small proportion of total emissions when taking into account the much larger figure from the device manufacture.
Googles 46% saving sounds like a big number, but it might only be 46% of 10%, which far less impressive. Making a device last longer not only means you save on the running cost/emissions, but amortise the fixed manufacturing emissions over a longer period and reduce them but needing to build fewer.
I am doomed.
I have an 15" Acer laptop that originally came with Vista installed, currently running Win7 Home Premium. I think we bought it in 2009 just after Win7 was released. It's nicknamed "The [Paving] Slab" as it's a hefty chunk at 2.8kg.
It's had a new battery (£12) and a new keyboard after the backspace key fell off (£11) and I put a bigger HDD in to use it as a backup. It still works fine although it takes a little while to boot. It was originally bought for the kids to do their homework on but I still use it for report writing. Win7 & Office 2010 plus LibreOffice and some other legacy software and it's fine. As the HDD is getting a bit slow I may even put a SSD in!
My desktop machine is about 8 years old although it does have 20GB of RAM and a decent graphics card and is connected to two 27" monitors.
I also have a Fujitsu Q520 i7 which is running Linux Mint and a newish HP laptop for when I'm travelling as it's light.
Chromebooks, Macs and MS Surface are all extremely difficult to repair or upgrade by design which is one very good reason that I'm not using one.
Last computer I bought (Disposal outlet), rather than "rescued" is the previously mentioned HP EliteBook 1040 G3 (i7) running W11 (After the registry key fix for TPM).
Soldered in memory (F**k!) but capable of supporting 2 drives (M.2 SSD, SATA), a little smaller than the older HP 970m to fit in my leather bag & sharing the same docking stations & power supplies (Via a adaptor).
Note to self install one of my spare 2.5" SSD's, while I think on it.
"As the HDD is getting a bit slow I may even put a SSD in!"
I strongly recommend that! I've "recovered" a few old laptops simply by adding an SSD (and RAM where possible). The difference for day to day use can be astounding, especially if it's an upgrade for same user. The biggest problem is if the RAM can't be upgraded and it's already thrashing the swapfile. While still a huge improvement, it'll probably shorten the life of the SSD significantly. I tried with an old netbook. A base install of Windows was already hitting the swapfile before even installing/running any apps. So I installed Linux instead (pick one with a fairly light desktop, not KDE etc). Still swaps out with multiple browser tabs open or when opening large files, but still way better than Windows for memory usage.
The (failing) RTC/CMOS battery in my daily-driver laptop is rechargeable, and soldered onto the motherboard.
In the time I've had it, I've increased the amount of memory, and replaced the hard drive with a large SSD (which is now worn out, according to its SMART statistics), so from that point of view, it had been good.
It it not simple to determine the exact model of RTC/CMOS battery (it isn't even mentioned in the Hardware Maintenance Guide)*, and having done so, they are not easily available. Of course, my 11-and-a-half-year old laptop (Manufacturing date: 2011-10-15) is regarded as obsolescent, but I was trying to keep it out of landfill. It was quite happily running Linux Mint 21.
For someone with soldering skills, and the right equipment, it's probably a trivial replacement. It's unfortunately non-trivial for me to do this, so I've had to bite the bullet and buy a new-to-me replacement (which is actually a two model-year old sale item). Going from an AMD A10-7300 to a Ryzen 5 Pro 4650U will be interesting.
It illustrates that repairability depends on easy (and cheap!) availability of components, no software lockdown from manufacturers, and design for repairability. In this case, the memory and SSD were no problem, and neither was installing Linux, which is great, but a 'trivial' component has caused an effective death-sentence.
NN
*Turns out to be an ML1220. Amazon and other online stores don't ship to my current location.
Thank-you for the suggestion. Unfortunately, if I change the country to UK, or anywhere else available to me, it does not show up as a stock item*. I'd be happy to get it, but then I need to do the soldering. Given that I'm all thumbs when it comes to D-I-Y, I'm not sure letting me loose with a soldering iron would be a good idea without pre-emptively calling out the fire-service.
If you look at Digi-Key USA, it is nearly end-of-sale. Last order is 30th June this year, and they only do ground shipping (because it contains Lithium). Not sure If I can order from them, but I might give it a go.
Mouser EU list the part (Panasonic ML-1220/F1BN ), say "End of Life: Scheduled for obsolescence and will be discontinued by the manufacturer. ", and "Mouser does not sell this product in your region. ".
OK, I'm pushing the boundaries looking for a component for an 11-year old PC, but it again illustrates the need for repairable design and availability of spare parts.
Thanks again for your suggestion.
NN
"If you look at Digi-Key USA, it is nearly end-of-sale. "
A 3v lithium cell is common as muck. Likely the one being discontinued is only the one with those specific leads welded on. Look for something with wire leads attached which you might find easily enough on eBay. I won't post a link as they change so fast.
"It it not simple to determine the exact model of RTC/CMOS battery"
You just need to know the voltage if you can't find a replacement. Clip the old one out hopefully able to leave some place to solder wires and make sure to get the polarity correct when you solder in a replacement. Double-stick tape for mounting. If the original battery was rechargeable, you need to replace it with a rechargeable. Trying to recharge a non-rechargeable battery leads to issues.
Planned obsolescence is an industry con and has been making the tech sector rich for decades.
You can place software, firmware or hardware between any PC/device and the net to create a browser translation layer which would filter and translate incoming content, so that the very latest web pages would work fine and safely on an old version of IE or Win Web on w98. Everything you see on a webpage can be translated into an image, text, data stream or a script. You can translate a script, parsing it to ensure it is safe. You could use this to surf the net on a ZX Spectrum if you wanted to. That's the beauty of tech. It is disappointing that there are so many able coders on the planet, but none seem to care enough about this to produce a BTL.
Tech upgrades (browsers, OSs and hardware, PCs, devices and xG phone services) are built on lies, operating at the expense of the environment and users to benefit the tech sector's profit margins.
"It is disappointing that there are so many able coders on the planet, but none seem to care enough about this to produce a BTL."
That's because we have. Open source operating systems that support lots of hardware, on which you can run the latest version of a browser. What's the advantage in making a version that will run on Windows 98 when, if you still have a computer that runs Windows 98, you could try to run a different operating system on it. Linux probably still supports the processor in that, and if it doesn't a slightly older version of the kernel before 486 was dropped will. You'll run into problems, but because you probably have very little RAM and a hard drive that's hanging on by a thread, but it can run if you put some work into it. The alternative is either to use another system, which is inefficient, or to write custom code for every environment that has ever existed to fit within constraints that no longer apply to most users.
As for any computer that needs hardware to use modern software, like trying to use the ZX81, that's just wasteful. If I'm putting a much more powerful computer in between the old computer and the internet, maybe it's better if the user just uses that more powerful computer. Unless I'm doing it just for fun, and some people have (I think there was an article about someone connecting a C64 to WiFi recently using a Raspberry Pi), then what's the point? In that case, you could just plug the Pi into your screen and use that instead.
... is the entire industry. It's a conveyor belt of progress or waste depending on which way you choose to look at it. Chip manufacturers make better processors, more RAM, which gets cheaper due to economies of scale; software gets more complex (and wasteful) and takes advantage to stupid-powerful processors and ever-abundant RAM; software works better on new computers; hardware manufacturers make newer computers with the better hardware that run the more complex software.
However, the software doesn't "just do the same thing" as before, at least not for all users. Computers today have way more use cases than they did 20 years ago. You just couldn't use a 20-year-old run-of-the-mill computer today to do the tasks we do today. At least not all the tasks.
It's progress. Without progress, there's no new hardware or software, and then there's no impetus to upgrade, so hardware manufacturers are left twiddling their thumbs, and prices go up. And in one sense it's wasteful - very wasteful.
One day we might come up with a 'peak personal computer' but I doubt it. Until then we'll keep progressing and keep wasting.
Solutions? Modular computers where we can replace parts; more reliance on 'the cloud' so any old computer can access the resources we need; wholesale change in our materialistic outlook anyone? Don't get me wrong: I live and breath tech. I've always worked in tech and I have always loved what I do. I make a living out of this shit.
We asked Google's Bard for its thoughts on this matter…
(We didn't really)
"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."
> Noted.
> Analysing…
> Solution found: Annihilate Mississippi, little of value will be lost.
> Opening ssh connection to wopr.norad.mil…
+++ATH
NO CARRIER
I've been living with the Auto Update Expiration (AUE) issue since 2019, when our oldest Chromebooks "aged out" . In fact, I'm writing this on an "expired" Chromebook that's been reworked to run Linux (Gallium OS, to be specific). I've tried Chrome OS Flex on that same platform, but Gallium OS seems to be slightly more responsive. That's for personal use; for enterprise use, I'd go with Flex. It bears mentioning that neither option works well (or, in some cases, works art all) on every model of Chromebook, and that the process of getting either one installed does required cracking the case.
What we ran into with the state-mandated testing software was that the vendor didn't want to go through the process of certifying the software for older versions of Chrome OS. It actually still ran on on the old machines, but we weren't willing to run the risk of having the state invalidate our test results for using a non-approved platform.
You can generally figure on a Chromebook being fully functional (including being usable for state testing) for a year after AUE. Beyond that, issues start to crop up. Websites that use the "latest and greatest" technology may not work properly (remember - when you stop getting updates to Chrome OS, you stop getting updates to the Chrome browser, too).
When I retired at the end of 2022, we were still using some Chromebooks from 2013, We'd converted them over to Flex and they were still working fine, but they were noticeably slower at some tasks than the newest units. They were also showing their age as far as physical condition; nothing major, just a lot of nicks, dings, and scratches.
. . . the same applies to Windows PCs, Macs and even worse for Phones - in fact, all tech devices. These days, a new device has not much advantage over the previous gen. It is all a Marketing exercise by all manufacturers, and we fall for it everytime - must have the new gizmo. Manufacturers don't really care at all about the environment or customers. All their 'green' statements are just so much lip service.
No, it's just the operating system which has an end of life date. Update that, you're good to go. I bought my 2013 model Pixel 5 years ago for $200 (new list $1100), put crostini on it, then GalliumOS, then Kubuntu, currently Linux Mint, which the wife likes.
That doesn't work unless you are able to install a new operating system and are comfortable with the computer no longer doing Chrome OS things.
The former is not as easy nowadays as it was with your 2013 model; back then, a lot more of the bootloader was standard. Now it's manufacturer-specific, just like Android, and also like Android, might be locked. The result is similar to Android: you might not be able to get it to accept other OS images and if you can, there may not be an image that runs. The only good part is that the ones with X86 processors will still generally boot X86 operating systems if you break through the bootloader protection, though driver support is in no way guaranteed.
The latter is a less important issue, and in fact for me a bonus as I'm not that interested in a thin client OS. However, it does mean that, for someone who wants to use their device as a Chromebook instead of an oddly configured laptop, they may be out of luck unless Flex works on their machine.
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I have an, Acer c710-2847 Chromebooks 2013. it’s one of the first basically a netbook. The good thing about it the ram and storage can be upgraded. It’s now got 256GB SSD and 8GB ram. It is no longer support by Google. But you can install ChromeOS Flex. It’s basically chrome OS. I also installed the same OS on a CR-48 I have two of them and they still work. All link to google and gets updates.
So no need to send them to land fill.
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