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Original Chromebook Pixel Reaches End of Life (droid-life.com)
Deathlizard writes: The original 2013 Chromebook Pixel, Google's $1200, Core i5 vision of a high end Chromebook, has reached End of Life. Owners are receiving a message that their device is no longer supported.
Time to put something useful on it, like Linux
Why do people put up with this? I use an i7 older than that, and because it's not a Chromebook, I can still get automatic updates.
It is the duty of all good Citizens to be terrorized by the urge to buy newer, shinier gadgets when your Corporate Masters decide they need another yacht.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Google should unlock the bootloader once the devices reach EOL. Even if the original OS is no longer supported, the hardware is still good, and can run a supported Linux distribution.
Consider a tech product reaching end of life support, mind you not just for upgrades but for bugs and security fixes. So what they are really saying, yeah, we know it has been a whole bunch years and we still haven't got all the bugs out of it and it still sort of mostly works but 'er' fuck off any how and buy another computer that will still mostly work, that contains bugs and security holes and that we will also stop trying to fix in some number of years time. Tech because we don't give a shit if our products don't ever fully function properly and securely as long as you keep paying to much for them. You would think patching and bug fixing should last until they finally make it work 100% but on no, near enough and fuck off and buy another one.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
man, my T430 is older than that (and has more ram, m2 ssd and 1tb ssr (slowly spinning rust). still going strong.
If what you say is true youâ(TM)ve only bought two or three laptops in your life.
Anyway a 2003 laptop is not really usable-and Iâ(TM)m speaking as someone who updated Linux on a 10 year old laptop just a few hours ago.
How do you patch for spectre / meltdown if google has the boot loader locked? If you cannot patch for those, why do anything other than recycle it?
I’m back in the 1990s. First thing, buy as many three letter domains as possible. Then buy as much Apple stock as possible. Oh yeah, tell Clinton to kill bin Laden.
I have Windows laptops that older that still gets OS updates. And until High Sierra, my wife’s ancient 2008 MacBook was still getting the latest version of MacOS. My desktop is almost that old and it’s perfectly functional.
Of course not. Because once upon a time it was considered impressive to build formidable products, and it was a disgrace when they failed early. Now people pay extra just to rent some already-doomed piece of equipment.
Disgusting.
Wow, that's pathetic. I just retired the last of my XP machines from 2005/6 a few years ago, and my Win 7 machines are humming along nicely.
If they want to be taken seriously, they need a longer support cycle. Up until now, I thought they had a great ecosystem. My son uses Chromebooks at his school, and everything there is cloud based.
But, five years??
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Buying a new phone every 4 or 5 years make sense, new tower frequencies in your area, new features but even now that is becoming less and less necessary. 5g will be the next time a new phone is necessary. This however is a joke.
The Pixel was not even a cheap machine, why anyone would pay that much for a Chromebook is beyond me, the entire point of Chromebook's were that it was so lightweight that it could run on ultra-cheap hardware.
Now 5 years later it's an expensive paperweight? Has anyone got Manjaro running on one of these?
Make SELinux enforcing again!
If Google were responsible it would provide instructions and make it easy to install Windows or Linux instead of telling it's users to fuck off. Nothing even remotely obsolete about an i5 laptop. Expecting people to just throw away perfectly fine hardware is sleazy.
Years ago I could almost buy argument why chefs were needed to bake roms for specific devices due to severe resource constraints. Today there are no credible excuses. It's absurd this nonsense is allowed to continue. Worse the problem appears to be growing into PC space where "security" is wielded as an excuse to fuck over / scare end users.
It looks like our friends in Europe will soon make illegal the wasteful, environmentally irresponsible, & abusive practice of planned obsolescence.
Alas, our Congress finds lawful bribery far too lucrative to be bothered with protecting the people or from abusive corporations.
Windows XP support ended in 2009.
You know that Samsung Dex outsells Chromebooks, and yet bizarrely Google docs don't work on it in any browser (Firefox Chrome or Samsung Internet).
IMHO, this is by design not by accident. They are not so incompetent that they cannot support a browser correctly if the string says 'dex' and some of the errors are clearly by design (e.g. fails to send a style sheet).
So they cannot support machines from 5 years ago with patches? Well they cannot support modern Android stuff running now!
What does it do? Who for? Why?
I was able to supply an acquaintance with an ~800MHz Celeron laptop w/ 256MB RAM, 800x600 screen on integrated graphics, and that thing would -plow- through more than 1,000 games(emu/or). Windows 2000(stripped and optimized), XBCD. Doesn't even have a modem, let alone ethernet or wifi. PCMCIA for that stuff!
A 2003 laptop is still valuable in some regards, even if it is just in valuable metals recycling. If it functions, there is plenty you can do with it. use some imagination, a scratch of knowledge and research, you can make that laptop into a proto-arcade cabinet, a serious router/firewall/access point or just an email and messaging machine.
Youtube, Facebook, well, that's -most all-, yeah it won't work well/at all on something of that age. all that means is that you gotta MAKE IT for its purpose and understand what it just is not able to do(or sometimes skirt with some serious workarounds). Such as, for an example, extra 25-40$ you can create a dedicated PLEX server out of a Pi or some such computer-on-a-board system and just stream what you want to that machine.
TL;DR -- "Usable" is completely subjective and a poor way to describe a computer without more following subjective information.
CAPTCHA: doubts
Look how many Linux distros are dropping 32bit support for example. People just want the latest shiny thing while perfectly functioning machines get trashed.
google just killed the "premium" chrome book market.
why spend on a high-end processor (that isn't really needed anyway) only to see it get kicked to the curb after a measly 5 years... hardware still way faster and more capable than what's in the crap sold in stores *today*.
google is just cheap lazy bastards. they buy hardware designed and built by the lowest chinese bidder regardless of whether it creates too much fragmentation within their hardware lineup to reasonably be able to provide updates for long-term.
five years for a glorified touch screen and keyboard is a fucking joke. 15 years, minimum, is what it should be supported for.
We just bought a Lenovo 300e Chromebook. I just found out it is out of support in june 2022. Thus in less than four years this device will get unsecure very soon without updates? I think we will return the system to the store and just buy a more expensive laptop with good Linux support.
It is strange that this Chromebook is just released: there are not even any real product reviews yet. So based on the Google support policies it should receive support at least until june 2023. The 500e was released at the same time but gets support until Nov 2023. Thus Google and Lenovo are effectively only supporting the more expensive devices somewhat longer?
It isn't worth the headache. I wish I could end of life updates on my goddamn win 10 machines. The extra protection isn't worth the pain of constant updates and things that once worked well slowing down and breaking altogether.
I'd say this is a feature that makes the Chromebook more attractive, not less. Click "don't remind me again" and no more headaches till the machine dies.
If Google is going to turn it into abandonware, they should provide software to unlock it and allow people to run whatever operating system they can get to install and run on it.