This is despicable Google

Is Chromebook expiration in any way tied to the Linux 5-year LTE cycle?

I'm a Linux fan but to see them brag up the LTE 5-year releases makes me shake my head sadly when Win10 is just finishing up 10 years.
 
Believe it or not, people are still bringing in $99 Chromebooks from Walmart, expecting miracles. When I tell them Chrome stopped supporting its own operating system in September of 2021, they pretty much get that "I give up" look. But you get what you pay for and a couple customers have death grips on theirs, because they are used to them.

I've taken 2 in trade but only give $10 for them. I have a wifi lounge in half of my shop so, if someone comes in without a laptop, they can rent mine for $5/2 hours but only if they're using them in the lounge. For temporary use, they're perfectly fine and easy to reset after each use.
 
ThatPlace928 said:
Believe it or not, people are still bringing in $99 Chromebooks from Walmart, expecting miracles. When I tell them Chrome stopped supporting its own operating system in September of 2021, they pretty much get that "I give up" look. But you get what you pay for and a couple customers have death grips on theirs, because they are used to them.

I've taken 2 in trade but only give $10 for them. I have a wifi lounge in half of my shop so, if someone comes in without a laptop, they can rent mine for $5/2 hours but only if they're using them in the lounge. For temporary use, they're perfectly fine and easy to reset after each use.
Click to expand...
Anything cheap, sorry if I offended someone, should have said low priced. Few years ago a neighbor's daughter brought over a HP laptop she'd received as a Christmas present from her mother. It was "running slow". Per her mother she paid some $290 or so.

W10 Home, 4GB RAM, Intel Celeron (yes you read that right) Processor, and a screaming 1TB 5400 RPM spindle. "thought 1TB would make it really fast". After dumping all the bloatware I got boot time to desktop down to 7 minutes or so from 15. Told her that was all that I can do. "I'm willing to pay you some money". Then buy a new laptop.
 
Markverhyden said:
Anything cheap, sorry if I offended someone, should have said low priced. Few years ago a neighbor's daughter brought over a HP laptop she'd received as a Christmas present from her mother. It was "running slow". Per her mother she paid some $290 or so.

W10 Home, 4GB RAM, Intel Celeron (yes you read that right) Processor, and a screaming 1TB 5400 RPM spindle. "thought 1TB would make it really fast". After dumping all the bloatware I got boot time to desktop down to 7 minutes or so from 15. Told her that was all that I can do. "I'm willing to pay you some money". Then buy a new laptop.
Click to expand...
If they don't take the time to do their research before buying, they get what they get. Sometimes the time involved in upgrading hardware and updating software is worth more than the original purchase.

I take trade-ins but, if it's not upgradable [2003 Dell I recently acquired and an even older Dell awhile ago] are worth $10 and I just strip them for parts. If I'm lucky, I can reuse some of the parts, mostly HDDs and RAM. I refurbish mini laptops and the 2gb RAM is still usable for me.
 
@Markverhyden

I think it's corrupted memory, unless this was a special limited or one-time offer.

As a subscriber I can "gift" up to 10 articles per month, and the gift links can be used by as many people as I choose to send them to. There is a button on most articles that when activated shows the following menu beneath it:
1693426785191.png
 
@britechguy I'm pretty certain it happened as I helped my daughter get in. As I said that was years ago, as in 6 or 7, so it could easily have been a promo. Used see those all the time with WSJ and NYT but not in the last year or so. The WSJ doesn't have any limits to sharing that I could find.
 
I thought I had seem some articles on how to install different Linux distros onto ChromeOS devices I think it has a lot of tricks and I believe it was a set top box with a ChromeOS not the laptops so not sure the differences but seems like might be an option to refurb some of them into something more usable. I also read the bit in the article with the Google BS about it being linked to hardware support seems like they are using that as an out there is no reason you can't continue to support software to a point just because the hardware manufacturer no longer supports its piece. If this limit doesn't apply to the ChromeOS one can install on old hardware how is this different I can understand warranty related issues being tied to hardware and that due to cost being minimized repairs are often not financially realistic but the only reason to stop the software is for the financial gain of the software developer. I would concede certain software support limits with regards to hardware tied security updates like we have with Windows 11 and its limited support for CPUs so if the Chromebooks on hardware that lacked certain level of TPM or something getting an end of life like this would make some amount of sense. They do admit the fact the Browser and OS are so linked that the system is further limited in how it could be used past that softwares end of life.
 
The problem isn't that Chromebooks expire, it's that people haven't researched their lifespan before buying. All technology is on a life cycle and seven or eight years is a long time to expect a device to be used in most environments.

I worked for a school district for a very very short time that had literally one million chromebooks in their google dashboard. Kids absolutely destroy these things and a huge number of them need repairs over and over because of abuse and accidents. A more expensive device, like Windows or Mac, would be far more expensive in its life for this simple reason.
 
14049752 said:
The problem isn't that Chromebooks expire, it's that people haven't researched their lifespan before buying. All technology is on a life cycle and seven or eight years is a long time to expect a device to be used in most environments.

I worked for a school district for a very very short time that had literally one million chromebooks in their google dashboard. Kids absolutely destroy these things and a huge number of them need repairs over and over because of abuse and accidents. A more expensive device, like Windows or Mac, would be far more expensive in its life for this simple reason.
Click to expand...

That could probably keep a dozen guys busy year round if they actually wanted to repair them lol. I can't even imagine how many of those get demolished in a single school year.
 
lan101 said:
That could probably keep a dozen guys busy year round if they actually wanted to repair them lol. I can't even imagine how many of those get demolished in a single school year.
Click to expand...
Well, imagine an elementary school building repurposed into a repair facility. The gymnasium, with a basketball sized court, surrounded all the way around with chromebooks stacked seven feet high, and in the middle boxes of new parts. I think like 12 or 16 repair stations in the gym where people come and spend a shift of either 4 or 8 hours. Individual classrooms dedicated to specific models / repair types.

I didn't like the job at the school very much, but I LOVED going to the repair facility. It tickled the autistic parts of my brain that liked taking things apart and putting them back together as fast as I could.
 
Chromebooks were designed to be 100% disposable. They're basically dumb terminals. Google would have been better off designing a full OS to compete with Windows and Mac OS. Then they could sell actually decent laptops and we'd have an alternative between Windows, which Microsoft screws up more and more with each update, and Mac OS, which sucks royally. I don't know why Google didn't do this. They didn't even have to start from scratch. All they had to do is customize their own Linux distro. If they did that then Linux would actually catch on instead of having the pitiful adoption rate it's had for 20+ years.
 
sapphirescales said:
Chromebooks were designed to be 100% disposable. They're basically dumb terminals. Google would have been better off designing a full OS to compete with Windows and Mac OS. Then they could sell actually decent laptops and we'd have an alternative between Windows, which Microsoft screws up more and more with each update, and Mac OS, which sucks royally. I don't know why Google didn't do this. They didn't even have to start from scratch. All they had to do is customize their own Linux distro. If they did that then Linux would actually catch on instead of having the pitiful adoption rate it's had for 20+ years.
Click to expand...
They did customize their own Linux distro. That's exactly what chrome os is. It's just a very purpose built os, and the purpose is to live in the Google ecosystem
 
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