Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’re Becoming E-Waste.
www.wsj.com
Educators say the simple laptops are no longer a good deal because once they reach their expiration dates they have no second life.
  • crowsby@lemmy.worldEnglish
    222·
    10 months ago

    Hey uhh that’s not very Don’t Be Evil of them.

    Old MacBooks and PC laptops can be turned into Chromebooks, which could address several of the concerns. Google freely offers ChromeOS Flex, which does the switch-over.

    Galaxybrain solution: Maybe they could release a version of ChromeOS Flex which allows old Chromebooks to also be used as Chromebooks.

    • IMongoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      10 months ago

      I’m pretty sure you can do that. The issue for schools is that the Chromebook would have to be less restricted to allow the installation of other OSs (I’m pretty sure). Right now it’s really hard for a student to install a new OS on a Chromebook. We’ve been using chromebooks in our district for around 10 years and I don’t think I’ve seen a student do a legitimate management bypass.

      The real issue is that these kids are using these devices every single day for multiple hours for 3-4 years. Sometimes it’s the only computer in the house so the parents are using it too. If they were bought new eol/eos should be 8 years. They are going to be in real rough shape after that.

  • soundguygoeshard@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    10 months ago

    I used one for a while. Chromebooks have an expiration date on them (fuck Google and the companies that make them, they are bullshit) and they only will last that long. They are also built cheaply and most are barely sufficient to use from new.

    I know why districts bought Chromebooks, but it’s the lack of foresight that brought this problem. Nobody thought about what would happen in two/three years, so now they are dealing with the consequences. It’s not like districts can buy used machines which are much better deals, but even cheap Windows laptops which aren’t much more expensive have significantly longer lifespans.

  • Johanno@feddit.deEnglish
    5·
    10 months ago

    Planned Obsolescence through Software. Nice! Why even build Hardware that fails when you can have perfectly fine Hardware that is Software locked.

    • Audbol@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      10 months ago

      Obsolete? I have 5 year old Chromebooks I use daily and those are untouched. The windows 11 ones I use more obviously. Easy to do and makes them infinitely more useful

  • The Pantser@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    10 months ago

    Also they are not supported for some testing software unless they are in a managed state. So if a school does not want to pay the license to manage the Chromebooks they are useless for testing with for example Ohio, Florida, Texas state testing as they need to be in kiosk mode and that can only happen from the device manager that costs money.

    • astropenguin5@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      That’s exactly what I’m trying to do right now with the chromebook I got to keep after graduating highschool this spring, the goal is a Linux Chromebook ideally. Doing my part to keep it from becoming ewaste or sitting in a bin somewhere, and hopefully learning while I do it!

        • astropenguin5@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          Well I’m currently at the step of having to make my own USB-C cable so I’d say there is some Plus I’ve never set up Linux myself before so that too And it will probably be the thing I just use to play around with Linux on so even if the setup isn’t that much to learn from I will use it to learn after