Chromebooks became extremely famous early in 2020, as the covid pandemic forced classrooms online, and school districts to send their students home and for that, they needed to couple them with inexpensive notebooks. And almost every school went with the option to buy Chromebooks.
In a brand-new report titled Chromebook Churn, the US Public Interest Research Group Education Fund draws the conclusion that many of these batches are already starting to break after three years. Districts may lose money as a result; according to PIRG, “doubling the lifespan of Chromebooks could result in $1.8 billion in savings for taxpayers.” It also produces a lot of electronic waste.
Repairability is one of the major issues. On average, Chromebooks are more difficult to upgrade and fix than Windows laptops. The PIRG discovered that this is partially due to the difficulty in obtaining replacement parts, particularly for components like screens, hinges, and keyboards that are particularly susceptible to spills, bumps, and jostles that come with school use.
For instance, researchers discovered that almost half of the replacement keyboards for Acer Chromebook listed online were out of stock and that over a third cost “$89.99 or more, which is nearly half the cost of a typical $200 Chromebook.” According to PIRG, some IT departments have resorted to purchasing extra batches of Chromebooks solely for their parts.
Chromebook Churn also addresses the Chromebooks auto-update expiration date, a problem with which users have long been unhappy.
While Google currently promises Chromebooks will receive eight years of automatic updates, the official start of that period is when Google certifies a Chromebook, not when a school actually receives that Chromebook, which can take much longer. Expiration is frequently “four to five years away” by the time a school has successfully ordered, received, installed, and deployed a fleet of student Chromebooks, the report found.
“When the software expires just a few years into a device’s use, schools are left with boxes of computers with working components that end up as electronic waste, and the need to buy even more Chromebooks.”
Due to the short expiration dates, it is more challenging for schools to resell their equipment, which increases the cost of recycling for some of them.
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