Thousands of Chromebooks Are 'Expiring,' Forcing Schools to Toss Them Out

upstart writes:

Thousands of Chromebooks Are 'Expiring,' Forcing Schools to Toss Them Out:

As thin, light, and inexpensive as Chromebooks can be, they come with a major caveat: short life expectancies. Chromebooks aren't just a little flimsier than the average laptop-they're shipped with software "death dates" that render them useless three to six years after release. And because schools are some of Chromebooks' biggest customers, they're now swamped with bricked hardware.

The Chromebook crisis is apparent at northern California's Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), where thousands of laptops have reportedly stopped working. Sam Berg, the district's computer science coordinator, told Silicon Valley's Mercury News that while Oakland students can gain tech repair experience through an OUSD internship, the expired Chromebooks simply aren't fixable. "They're designed to be disposable," Berg said.

The district was forced to replace 3,851 laptops last year after the Chromebooks reached their built-in death dates. Over the next five years, that number will skyrocket to 40,000 as more than 60 Chromebook models expire. The district's tech internship for teenagers will attempt to salvage as much hardware as possible, but most will need to be recycled.

Google told OUSD the baked-in death dates are necessary for security and compatibility purposes. As Google continues to iterate on its Chromebook software, older devices supposedly can't handle the updates. But this illustrates a particularly contentious issue in modern technology: planned obsolescence. From smartphones and computers to printers and even kitchen appliances, consumers have learned to purchase things with the knowledge that they'll need to be replaced in just a few years. Not only is this expensive, but it produces a shocking amount of e-waste, less than a quarter of which is recycled.

Also submitted as: Built-in software 'death dates' are sending thousands of schools' Chromebooks to the recycling bin

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