this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023

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Built-in software ‘death dates’ are sending thousands of schools’ Chromebooks to the recycling bin (www.mercurynews.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

302 comments fedilink hide all child comments

There are few things quite as emblematic of late stage capitalism than the concept of "planned obsolescence".

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The service life of the devices was known up-front. You can check for yourself the service life dates of every Chrome OS machine here:

https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en

The correct deployment strategy would be to make a big purchase at the front end of a device's lifecycle and then only replacements from then on out so that you get the most out of every machine. Future capital purchases would be with a new device and termination date.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Not sure why everyone is so upset. This is nothing new. Has been happening for years with phones and tablets. They get at least 5 years of updates, which I think is pretty good. My kids have had the same CBs at their schools for 6 years and still going strong. Some of my laptops don't last that long.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

5 years is shit. People have been conditioned over the past 10-15 years to think that the mobile way of doing this is the correct way. Before that, your PC was an open system that you could upgrade and update until it was incapable of running the latest software due to hardware limitations (not enough RAM, GPU API level, processor extensions, etc). These days the mobile companies have convinced people that none of that matters. The software is so intrinsically tied to the hardware that even if the hardware is not much different to the new hardware, the new software won't work.

A 15 year old PC can still do a lot of work on a modern OS these days. Why can't a 6 year old phone? Because the people who want you to buy a new phone said so.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good, maybe that will get them to stop using Chrome OS in schools, it has been a disaster for computer literacy in general.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

These things are such junk - even when new they were so slow and bloated that they couldn't load my kid's schoolwork half the time. I had to make sure he had an alternate laptop for use so he wouldn't fall behind. I felt really bad for the school district, it was clear they were being ripped off, and that most of the machines were going to be in a landfill within 3 years time.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Anyone got a non-paywalled version of the article?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

ok I'll bite, can't they reinstall the chromebooks with linux instead?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Sure, but then they have to pay the salaries of an IT department to not only do the OS install on thousands of devices, but also provide support when things go wonky from kids doing dumb shit (it's Linux; there will be that one kid who figures out how to gain su privileges and convinces a couple others to rm -f / their shit). The same thought crossed my mind, but these are low spec $200 laptops that I really don't think it would be financially viable to do so.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

great scenario for an immutable distro

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My 15 years old Linux laptop can still do everything (except gaming new titles)

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

When I was in 9th grade it was netbooks with Windows 7 and they were also terrible and fated for the recycling bin before I was a junior.

In most enterprise IT your lifespan for hardware is between 5 and 7 years maybe 10 for printers and network switches.

I'm sure most schools try to stretch hardware as far as it will go but IT would have known when they bought the Chromebooks that they'd not be long for this world as cheap as they were and that's the price they would pay for paying such a low price.

I think what is sticking up the works is on an administrative level, higher ups are expecting IT departments to stretch EOL dates like they used to do with Windows machines but now they absolutely can't and Admin didn't plan to have to buy all new whether or not IT did

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