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First Batch Of Chromebooks Reach End Of Life, To Stop Receiving Support and Updates (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader shares a BetaNews report:The original Chromebooks launched back in 2011 are reaching the end of their support cycle. With Google offering a fairly generous five years of support and updates, users have had a good run, but the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook is the first device to drop off the support list. Having been launched in August 2011, Acer AC700 Chromebook will be in a similar position in a couple of months. Google says that after five years, automatic updates are "no longer guaranteed". Interestingly, it has continued to provide updates to at least one of its own device that originated in 2010. It's not entirely clear what will happen by the end of this month, but if the company sticks to how it handles its smartphones, you should be worried.
I hear there are lots of distros to choose from.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It's because of people like you that we're overrun by hardware in dumps all over the world.
If we were talking 2001, I would be inclined to agree. But these computers are only 5 years old. The socks I'm wearing are older than that.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Since when is five years considered fairly generous? Surely that would be the absolute minimum for supporting any software, let alone an operating system.
My aging Windows 7 notebook is still getting support, and will continue to be supported for quite some time now that I have done the free upgrade to Windows 10. Hell, even the old Vista notebooks that were passed on to me still get updates, although Windows Update is incredibly slow on them so I can't let it automatically check for them.
But I can (and do) run Windows 10 with absolutely no problem on a laptop from 2011.
+1
After suitable updates (bigger storage and RAM as needed/possible) if your Chromebook is ARM based, put Linux on it. If your Chromebook is intel based, put Linux or Win10 on it.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Many Chromebook applications are front ends to cloud based services. If Google decides to end of life one of those services then you're screwed. And this has happened before such as when YouTube end-of-lifed an older client API. So yeah your chromebook might work for a while and then gradually bitrot and break as one service after another is withdrawn.
Aside from the cloud services, chances are the browser will be start breaking over time too. Sites that expect chrome won't be happy about some 2 or 3 year old version and will start throwing up errors to upgrade and so on. Except of course you can't upgrade.
"The socks I'm wearing are older than that."
That says so much more about you than about Google
I never saw the fascination with a device that had so little storage I can't even run off the whole contents of my camera onto if I'm not connected to the web.
Cheap? Not really. Given that for another $100 I can get better specs, a real storage device, and an operating system that's $100 to buy (I realize some don't want Windows), the cost of a Chromebook is really expensive. Not to mention Google spying on you!
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
TFA states that the Chromebooks will continue to function - they just won't get updates. Assuming Google told people going in what the support term would be, I don't see the big deal.
But is is a reminder that paying $1200+ for one of those high-end Chromebooks might not have been a particularly wise choice.
#DeleteChrome
That should mean End of copyright privileges so that third parties can pick up where Google leaves off.
Regardless, what's the problem? Will it self destruct if you load a different OS? Even Windows doesn't need 32gb.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's more directly because of people that make laptops that fail after a year or two and that are so expensive to repair that it's cheaper to just buy a new one.
Real Men don't post on Slashdot.
I comment occasionally so that I can mod others -1 overrated or -1 offtopic.
This is how the year of Linux desktop finally happens!
Of course it does. It says NotDrWho is smart for choosing quality clothes that survive being worn and machine-washed hundreds of times, rather than cheap discount-store clothes that may not last even a hundred washes (two years).
That sort of depends on whether OP throws them away or sells them to someone who otherwise wouldn't have gotten a laptop at all.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
It's because of people like you that someone is wasting electricity trying to turn carbon dioxide into rocks.
Fun fact: A circa-1990 desktop PC consumed ~350-450 watts and was capable of fewer MIPS/watt than my Tegra K1 Chromebook is capable of producing at 15W.
I buy laptops to do work, not as sentimental discussion pieces so I can bore teenagers with anecdotes about my glory days sorting piles of punch cards that fell on the ground.
I've never owned an iPhone and I used my cell phones typically for ~4 years. I wear my shoes until there are holes in them. I also own several 7950 GPUs which I don't use for Litecoin mining any more because the cost of electricity to run them for a single month exceeds their cost of replacement. Would spiking my elelctric bill back up to $500/month worth of "global warming" by turning them back on as space heaters make your "reduce reuse recycle" pee pee hard?
1) Electronics waste-stream management is a cash cow for anyone willing to play with aqua regia, and the lack of workplace safety in 3rd World Countries is as much my fault as I am a beneficiary of interest on World Bank loans(which is: "not at all").
2) My time is more valuable than a cubic foot of real estate in a landfill. There is a unit of measurement which quantifies environmental cost known as "dollars". I don't survive off of photosynthesis so as long as this planet is burdened with my lungs sucking it's oxygen: I plan on converting "cow fat" in to "solutions to vexxing problems" in the most expedient way possible.
3) I support nuclear power(I could have no other talking points and still have moral superiority vs someone who is eco-conscious based on "feelings")
4) I don't plan on having any children, so my eco-footprint is already substantially lower than a breeder's(no matter how frequently I take 30-60 minute hot-showers)
So take that "Greener than thou" pedestal that you presume to be gazing down at me from and kindly shove it up your ass. Then lick my taint you hippie twat.
If you want to make a difference, study economics and then run for congress to correct the distortions on market prices which allow for economic externalities to be carried by anyone other than the person who produces them. In the mean time: I will spend as much of my money on whatever the fuck I want totally guilt free because I'm not a "shivering naked in the dark/living in a cave" eco-zealot who thinks windmills are bad because they kill birds and nuclear power plants are the worst thing ever because of "China Syndrome".
Asshole.
2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC should be more than enough horsepower for a basic Linux distro running an XFCE, LXDE, or Mate DE. Heck, 1GB is enough for any of those DEs on my eight-year old Atom N270-powered netbook
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
OK, move along lady.
That's a load of crap and you know it. The driver towards the lower quality and expensive to repair isn't the disposable world at all. It's our desire to have smaller thinner faster with edge to edge display made entirely of glass like we're fighting blue beasts on Pandora because THAT is what we imagine the future to be. It's businesses that go to the likes of Dell and say we want 3000 computers but we don't want to pay anything for them. It's this idea that we should be detaching ourselves from the dying form factor of the laptop and migrating to slates.
What do you think is going to give?
Same here. Also have it dual booting Win7 pro for the XP VM when needed.
It's sad I can't get the same software for 7 or 10 that runs so well on XP.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Not to mention that upgrading hardware is becoming less necessary with each new generation of hardware, aside from GPUs.
Until we get quantum computers or something, we're not going to see huge jumps like the 8086/286/386/486 era.
this is clear artificial obsolescence. e.g.: chromebooks manufactured today are usually slower than ones from 2013. the ones from 2013 have 2955U CPU, which is a lot faster than today's n3050, n3060, etc CPUs. upcoming chromebooks with n3150 will finally be (tiny bit) faster. i am quite annoyed that slower chromebooks will receive updates for longer than mine.
it could also mean he has great many socks (and only gets to wear each pair once a month or so)
And sometimes, when things aren't really that old, built-in obsolescence happens too.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Many, many Google Software Projects get Shuttered before their time.
IIRC, Even Nexus Phones are only guaranteed 18 months of Android Support They could get up to 3 years; but might be as little as 18 months, depending.
Now this?
Meanwhile, my iPad 2 and iPhone 4s can load the latest version of iOS 9, and you can install the latest version of OS X, 10.11 El Capitan, on nearly any Mac from 2007-08 up.
Sheesh. If you wouldn't accept it for a car/appliance don't accept it for a computer/software!
Please don't give the car manufacturers ideas.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
You should never run a browser that isn't updated on a regular basis. You shouldn't even run a browser that is updated, but that has an understaffed security team.
Chrome has some of the best security out there. But even with its pretty impressive track record, it does occasionally get hacked. Off the top of my head, I am not aware of an exploit that ever worked against an up-to-date Chromebook. But I might very well be wrong -- in fact, I strongly suspect I am. And you are certainly vulnerable, if you get tricked into installing a shady browser extension.
It's the wild West out there. The internet is a dangerous place. ChromeOS is some of the safest way to access the internet. But it only is safe as long as you always make sure all security bugs are closed immediately. While your Chromebook is supported, this automatically happens in the background all the time. You probably don't even notice it. If it no longer is supported, things go bad pretty quickly.
"...lick my taint you hippie twat"
Ah, that brought back happy memories of alt.flame at its best. Bravo, and thanks.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
It will get Windows 10 soon.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't think that's entirely true. I think it's more that a lot of people prefer a fanless Chromebook and that it's expensive to have the power of a Celeron or i3 in a fanless CPU (think HP Chromebook 13). Surfing the web doesn't require that high of an octane score anyways. Most of the Chromebooks with the Braswelll CPUs you listed have ~8k octane score, which is acceptable, but not super fast.
Seriously, this is an opportunity for Linux to step forward and provide lots of nice hardware for ppl.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"My support for 7 is so thorough, it forced me to update to 10".
My other Windows 7 computers are still being supported and will keep getting security upgrades until 2020. So no, I'm not being forced to upgrade to Windows 10. I'm just saying that the upgrade means that I get an additional 5 years of support, which brings the support for my computer up to what I call a generous 14 years.
For POS, XP is even longer!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
You can pick up a replacement for less than $200.
Plus the cost of disposing of your e-waste.
It's not like a virus or ransomware is going to mess with a Chromebook.
It is if a computer intruder discovers a vulnerability in Chrome that Google refuses to patch on older devices.
Will it self destruct if you load a different OS?
No, but it will kill the "different OS" if you're not very careful.
Putting another operating system on a Chromebook requires switching from verification mode to developer mode. But every time you power on a Chromebook in developer mode, it displays a screen for 30 seconds begging the user to press Space to reenable verification (which wipes the drive). The screen can be skipped by pressing Ctrl+D, but if you're not the person who turns it on, the key that gets pressed won't be Ctrl+D. If someone else (such as wife or kid) turns it on and presses Space, under the mistaken impression that that's the correct button to push, all your work since your last backup is gone, and you are out the use of the laptop until you can make reinstallation media.
From the linked article on lifehacker.com:
Say someone other than you, such as a spouse or child, turns the laptop on and presses Space to re-enable verification during those 30 seconds. Guess what'll happen to your data.
It's because of people like you that we're overrun by hardware in dumps all over the world.
As if the poster purchases any more than those dying to have bleeding edge products.
I buy Chromebooks to serve as disposable laptops for 1-2 years. In practice: I replace mine once every 1-2 years with something newer/shinier.
I like the way you think. Purchasing budget systems more often results in more processing power than purchasing a state-of-the-art device every 5 years. Just consider the speed of processing, display quality and port speeds, and then do the math. A much slower PC purchased more often results in greater overall power and cost savings.