[GTALUG] Chromebook death dates

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Stewart C. Russell via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
| 
| TIL that Chromebooks brick themselves when they hit a hard-coded date: the
| date when Google stops providing updates:
| https://coloradosun.com/2023/05/26/colorado-schools-chromebooks-churn-outdated/
| 
| The article's about Denver Public School District, who are finding a whole lot
| of their Chromebooks bought during pandemic are running out of life. The
| environmental and cost impacts are huge.

[James' reply has detailed useful information.]

All commercial OSes sunset old hardware.  Only ChromeBooks declare that 
date when the systems are first available.  (It would be good if support 
lifetimes were longer).

The article is quite confused.  I think that this is what it really
means

- after AUE (Auto Update Expiration) the devices still work but there is
  no promise of security updates.

- the school board seems to have a policy that says devices without
  security updates must be banned from their network.  I think that
  that is a wise policy but it isn't the same as saying that the
  devices are bricked.

- the school board bought a lot of units at the same time so many are
  losing support at the same time.

- (speculation) perhaps the school board bought older models of
  ChromeBooks because they were cheaper, even though their AUE was
  sooner than newer models.  I always check the AUE before I buy a
  ChromeBook

================

[The rest of this is meandering discourse supporting the above.  Feel
free to ignore.]

I certainly have a ChromeBook that no longer gets updates.  Annoying.
But it still works (last I checked, well after support stopped).  I
don't use it because:

- I bought it to run Linux but I never got it to do so (Giles has the
  same model and he did get it to run Linux).

- I have newer ChromeBooks with much nicer features

- (probably) too many web sites require more resources

- I don't like browsing with known security problems

The actual claim in the article gets narrowed down to:

	An arsenal of Chromebooks that can’t keep up with new software or 
	that shut students out from the websites they rely on will 
	essentially become obsolete, leading to both significant costs for 
	districts and environmental hazards — issues highlighted in the 
	April report.

What software can they not keep up with?  ChromeBooks really don't
have many applications.  Things I can imagine:

- school policy that forbids using stale browsers (since they will
  have known vulnerabilities)

- new ciphers or CoDecs that are not supported (probably too soon for
  that)

- new browser features like Web Assembly (WASM).  These seem pretty
  unimportant.

- modern Chromebooks support Android apps but old ones don't.
  But I'm pretty sure that that transition was years before the
  pandemic so I don't think that it would apply to a fleet of
  ChromeBooks bought for the pandemic.

Much later in the article:

	“My role is to get as much as we can out of these devices before 
	we’re no longer able to have them on our network,” Dodge said, 
	adding that Chromebooks that can’t receive security updates can 
	pose threats to the district’s network.

This certainly sounds as though the ChromeBooks still work but no
longer are considered secure by the school board.  I actually think
that is an appropriate policy.

Windows has been pretty good in recent years as far as providing free
updates and supporting old hardware.  Microsoft is changing this: Win
10 support disappears in October 2025 (if I remember correctly) and
Microsoft policy is that old computers are not supported (for a
definition of "old" that we need not go into; most of my computers are
"old").  I expect that most school Windows systems are old.  Oh, and
Windows is hard/impossible to keep secure, even with updates
(especially in the hands of students).

iPads and Android tablets also fall out of support.  I don't think
either come with a promise of updates until a declared date.  So they
are inferior to ChromeBooks in this issue.

The greatest longevity is a Linux system.  I'm pretty sure that the
school would not replace ChromeBooks with Linux systems.

So: I would think that this is stupid reporting but a useful but partial
Public Service Announcement.

Certainly the school board should have known the support life when
they purchased the ChromeBooks and planned for that life cycle.  No
other OS provides as clear a statement of support lifetime up front.