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I'm real confused by the comments here. Chromebooks were most definitely a good deal for schools. They are incredibly cheap; half of the appeal to me is that th

I'm real confused by the comments here. Chromebooks were most definitely a good deal for schools. They are incredibly cheap; half of the appeal to me is that they are effectively disposable and don't need to be fawned over. Who cares if they can't be squeezed for the same length as a $1000 laptop? You can buy three of them. The problem I see is that school budgets don't account for such expenses on the regular, so schools end up using hardware for years and years after EOL. Either way, seems like a good deal to me.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> The problem I see is that school budgets don't account for such expenses on the regular, so schools end up using hardware for years and years after EOL. That's a meaningful distinction; most hardware can keep running current software for a long time after it's theoretically EOL, but Chromebooks stop updating their software outright when the hardware falls out of support.
jraph 3y ago
Everybody should care. Producing a laptop has a high environmental and human cost. A school throwing away hundreds of computer has an impact on me, you and every other living being on this planet. A disposable laptop is an absurd concept. The idea itself should feel appalling.
- kcartlidge 3y ago
  All the technical and business arguments for or against Chromebooks are a side-show. This is the real answer. Thank you.
deleted 3y ago
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FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>half of the appeal to me is that they are effectively disposable and don't need to be fawned over. Maybe there's a hidden cost to pay for making e-waste disposable hardware which is felt at the environmental level. I'm pretty disturbed at how this waste is not considered in the rich west, as it only looks at the monetary cost of the device and not at the fact that those devices most likely end up in landfills much sooner than should be accepted. Just becasue we can financially accept such a thing, doesn't mean we should, for the sake of the environment.
- xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
  I've gone through a few Chromebooks but what is, or perhaps is not, surprising is that I haven't gone through them at a meaningfully different rate than regular laptops. Given that, it seems like a net win, at least for me. You can't seriously say that the likes of HP or Dell have not simply extorting the school system for years. My Chromebooks are just as durable. Besides, after several years of use by kids, I have a hard time imagining these things becoming anything other than waste. And where I live in the west, I pay an additional tax for products which create e-waste (namely consumer electronics) and I must dispose of them at appropriate facilities. E-waste is definitely a problem but it's not a relevant factor here as far as I can tell.
lozenge 3y ago
What's actually expiring in these machines? They are built on known technologies like BIOS, ARM, Wi-Fi. In other computers and laptops, I can update the software for 8-10+ years before stuff gets screwy. I get that they can stop updates due to minimum RAM or display resolution requirements, but this isn't that. This isn't the case for Android because of the SOC blob and how entwined it is with the Linux kernel, but that reasoning doesn't apply here.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

> The problem I see is that school budgets don't account for such expenses on the regular, so schools end up using hardware for years and years after EOL. That's a meaningful distinction; most hardware can keep running current software for a long time after it's theoretically EOL, but Chromebooks stop updating their software outright when the hardware falls out of support.

jraph 3y ago

Everybody should care. Producing a laptop has a high environmental and human cost. A school throwing away hundreds of computer has an impact on me, you and every other living being on this planet. A disposable laptop is an absurd concept. The idea itself should feel appalling.

kcartlidge 3y ago
All the technical and business arguments for or against Chromebooks are a side-show. This is the real answer. Thank you.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>half of the appeal to me is that they are effectively disposable and don't need to be fawned over. Maybe there's a hidden cost to pay for making e-waste disposable hardware which is felt at the environmental level. I'm pretty disturbed at how this waste is not considered in the rich west, as it only looks at the monetary cost of the device and not at the fact that those devices most likely end up in landfills much sooner than should be accepted. Just becasue we can financially accept such a thing, doesn't mean we should, for the sake of the environment.

xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
I've gone through a few Chromebooks but what is, or perhaps is not, surprising is that I haven't gone through them at a meaningfully different rate than regular laptops. Given that, it seems like a net win, at least for me. You can't seriously say that the likes of HP or Dell have not simply extorting the school system for years. My Chromebooks are just as durable. Besides, after several years of use by kids, I have a hard time imagining these things becoming anything other than waste. And where I live in the west, I pay an additional tax for products which create e-waste (namely consumer electronics) and I must dispose of them at appropriate facilities. E-waste is definitely a problem but it's not a relevant factor here as far as I can tell.

lozenge 3y ago

What's actually expiring in these machines? They are built on known technologies like BIOS, ARM, Wi-Fi. In other computers and laptops, I can update the software for 8-10+ years before stuff gets screwy. I get that they can stop updates due to minimum RAM or display resolution requirements, but this isn't that. This isn't the case for Android because of the SOC blob and how entwined it is with the Linux kernel, but that reasoning doesn't apply here.