This article seems to focus on how Chromebooks stop receiving updates.
I don’t know if that is reasonable for Google to do or not. I don’t know whether they could just keep updating it for three more years or something like that.
But in any case the hardware itself isn’t worn out, and like others have said you can install a Linux distribution.
We didn’t used to have these big “No more updates now forevermore” notifications. I guess because we didn’t need to (or didn’t think we needed to) keep updating the OS for security purposes. My second laptop started on Windows Vista and then moved on to Ubuntu. I could probably install the latest Ubuntu if I was still using it. Although it wouldn’t be great with the default setup due to the limited amount of RAM.
Unless Google has set their EOL to something unreasonable then this isn’t “planned obsolecence”. Planned obsolescence is to build in things that will fail so that you have to buy something new after a while. Supporting old hardware with new updates might cost something to Google, just like how supporting old hardware or software with things like security updates tend to cost not-nothing in general.
Like I indirectly mentioned, having to install a new OS used to be thing that you had to do. I have to update my OS and I am not looking forward to it since a simple command-line upgrade might fail in some way, thus I will probably have to do it manually. But now apparently people are throwing their hands up because of a warning that says that the software won’t be updated. Now I’m not saying that teachers should do it kind of like an extra-curricular activity.[1] And perhaps there should be professionals available who know how to either upgrade the Chromebooks (why can’t they be manually upgraded?) or to install a sane OS like a Linux distribution.
Lastly, petitioning a corporation might not get you anywhere. I say this out of pure cynicism. It’s better to petition your government to force companies to do “the right thing”.
[1] I have to mention this because apparently American teachers have to buy their own school supplies and other such nonsense since they are so underfunded.
Schools bought these Chromebooks because they are low-cost and also low-maintenance: Google takes care of updates, and you have far fewer stuff to configure (that can also be configured incorrectly) than with Windows (which BTW now also has an "expiry date": Windows 11 has very strict hardware requirements, and Windows 10 will be EOL in 2024). So proposing to install Linux instead, with all the configuration hassle that implies, is not really realistic I'm afraid...
I don’t know if that is reasonable for Google to do or not. I don’t know whether they could just keep updating it for three more years or something like that.
But in any case the hardware itself isn’t worn out, and like others have said you can install a Linux distribution.
We didn’t used to have these big “No more updates now forevermore” notifications. I guess because we didn’t need to (or didn’t think we needed to) keep updating the OS for security purposes. My second laptop started on Windows Vista and then moved on to Ubuntu. I could probably install the latest Ubuntu if I was still using it. Although it wouldn’t be great with the default setup due to the limited amount of RAM.
Unless Google has set their EOL to something unreasonable then this isn’t “planned obsolecence”. Planned obsolescence is to build in things that will fail so that you have to buy something new after a while. Supporting old hardware with new updates might cost something to Google, just like how supporting old hardware or software with things like security updates tend to cost not-nothing in general.
Like I indirectly mentioned, having to install a new OS used to be thing that you had to do. I have to update my OS and I am not looking forward to it since a simple command-line upgrade might fail in some way, thus I will probably have to do it manually. But now apparently people are throwing their hands up because of a warning that says that the software won’t be updated. Now I’m not saying that teachers should do it kind of like an extra-curricular activity.[1] And perhaps there should be professionals available who know how to either upgrade the Chromebooks (why can’t they be manually upgraded?) or to install a sane OS like a Linux distribution.
Lastly, petitioning a corporation might not get you anywhere. I say this out of pure cynicism. It’s better to petition your government to force companies to do “the right thing”.
[1] I have to mention this because apparently American teachers have to buy their own school supplies and other such nonsense since they are so underfunded.