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.

Comments

Time to try out Linux on that laptop

[NotDrWho]

I hear there are lots of distros to choose from.

Re:Time to try out Linux on that laptop

[NotDrWho]

Most distros only take a few gig of space at most.

Re:Time to try out Linux on that laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but the thing is... If you're using a Chromebook, you're not using anything that is going to be needing all that much (Think what an RPi can do for people...the same can be said for a Chromebook)- on top of the fact that you can install Chrome/Chromium on the image, be supported and still have your Crhome experience. There's even a Community supported ChromeOS version.

Re:Time to try out Linux on that laptop

[bluefoxlucid]

The RAM and CPU are usually BGA; the SSD is complex and prohibitive to BGA, so they use an MSATA. You can always pop in a 256GB Samsung EVO 850.

Re:Time to try out Linux on that laptop

[bill_mcgonigle]

The SSD shouldn't matter too much. That they're often ARM laptops with non-free hardware (video/wireless/touchpad, notably) is going to be a bigger issue.

I run CentOS 7 on my "chromebook" but it's an i3-based unit. And even at that, I have a bunch of customization on there to make the kernel/touchpad/video stable.

Re:Speaking as a chromebook user

[Anonymous Coward]

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 don't see the problem with this.

It's because of people like you that we're overrun by hardware in dumps all over the world.

Re:Worried?

[NotDrWho]

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.

Fairly generous?

[Gadget_Guy]

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.

Re:Fairly generous?

[NotDrWho]

For comparison, MS only ended support for Windows XP in 2014. That was over 12 years after its release.

Re:Fairly generous?

[ThosLives]

I agree - as a consumer it would be great to see computers (and electronics in general, including software) have to provide the same support lifetimes as, say, automobiles or aircraft. (I admit I don't know how much of this is regulation and how much is de-facto in those industries; e.g., you wouldn't last long as an auto manufacturer if you repair parts for your car were unavailable after 5 years.)

It's kind of a shame that other industries have product support regulations, but software / computers don't seem to.

From a developer standpoint though, I can see this being a bit of a pain, because the trend now is so much for "disposable" short-term development cycles, rather than developing for the long-term. Part of the tradeoff between fast dev cycles and robustness. I think we've swung a bit too far to the "rapid" side of things, and need to go a little ways back to robust.

Re:Fairly generous?

[Gilgaron]

Since they're giving it away for the time being anyhow, I wonder if MS would consider getting Google's goat by offering free Windows 10 for these things. I've not used a Chromebook so perhaps the hardware is too thin, but it is funny to imagine.

Re:Fairly generous?

[macs4all]

Apple? Well Snow Leopard stopped receiving even security updates in under 5 years.

Yes, but they also provided a FREE "way out" of that.

Essentially, Any Mac that can run OS X Snow Leopard can be Upgraded to the Current OS X Release, 10.11, El Capitan, for FREE. And it will run it just fine. May even be a little faster... Due to hardware limitations, some newer features may not be present; but the OS will run and install. And be supported...

In fact, that's what drove MS to make Windows 10 "Free". Apple had already been doing it for the past 3 Major OS Releases. (Since 10.9 "Mavericks").

Re:Fairly generous?

[breeze95]

In Accounting, most computer hardware has a 2-3 year depreciation for a reason.

And that reason is mostly that 20 years ago the useful working lifetime for a PC before either a significant hardware failure or a cost-effective major upgrade actually was around 3 years.

However, that hasn't been true for at least a decade, with increasing reliability of hardware and reducing real world benefits to upgrading so often unless your hardware did already fail. I don't work with any accountants who would assume such a short lifetime for depreciation purposes today.

The IRS allows for a 5 year depreciation on computers and peripheral equipment. Therefore, companies use a 5 year depreciation on most computers and equipment.

No biggie

[williamyf]

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.

Re:Worried?

[DrXym]

Not necessarily.

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.

They'll still function, right?

[93 Escort Wagon]

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.

Re:They'll still function, right?

[thegarbz]

But is is a reminder that paying $1200+ for one of those high-end Chromebooks might not have been a particularly wise choice.

The devices that are at EOL are the cheap Chromebooks like the $200 Samsung device or the $350 Asus one.

Google's OWN devices (the expensive ones) are still in support, even the first device which is a year older than the ones dropping out of support now.

End of life support

[fustakrakich]

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.

Re:End of life support

[markus]

It's all Open Source and under a very liberal license at that. Also, the hardware can be unlocked super easily. That's officially supported by Google. So, nothing else is really needed for somebody else to take over, if they so choose.

On the other hand, it's five year old hardware. You can pick up a replacement for less than $200. And that will be a better device. So, I don't see a particularly big and active community around supporting the old devices.

Re:Speaking as a chromebook user

[idontusenumbers]

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.

Re:Speaking as a chromebook user

[rdelsambuco]

Real Men don't post on Slashdot.

Who would have guessed

[Ketorin]

This is how the year of Linux desktop finally happens!

Re:Worried?

[tepples]

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).