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Design quirks, limited parts, and other ways Chromebooks frustrate repairs

arstechnica.com

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Re: Design quirks, limited parts, and other ways Chromebooks frustrate repairs

#61

Post by Nullabillity »

jeffbee wrote: post #32
TOMDM wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be out of touch, but do people really expect a $200 laptop to last more than a few years?

In daily use by children! Both of these articles, by the same author, fail to engage with the economic design point of the Chromebook. Only the most bozotic k-12 IT department is scrounging keyboards on eBay. The normal people bought their Chromebooks from CDW with 4-years repair or replace contracts, and they don’t care where the parts come from. And nobody wants to be upgrading machines piecemeal the way the author…

Even buying new you're often far better off buying a low-spec device and upgrading it than buying a laptop with the specs you want.

Re: Design quirks, limited parts, and other ways Chromebooks frustrate repairs

#62

Post by izacus »

easton wrote: post #53
izacus wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they're not, remember that EoL Chromebooks don't even get Chrome update anymore. On other OSes, Chrome gets updated for more than a decade.

Google was working on a way to ship Chrome updates to older versions of Chrome OS, is that still not out yet? https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/l... .

Nope :/

Re: Design quirks, limited parts, and other ways Chromebooks frustrate repairs

#63

Post by jeffbee »

Nullabillity wrote: post #61
jeffbee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In daily use by children! Both of these articles, by the same author, fail to engage with the economic design point of the Chromebook. Only the most bozotic k-12 IT department is scrounging keyboards on eBay. The normal people bought their Chromebooks from CDW with 4-years repair or replace contracts, and they don’t care where the parts come from. And nobody wants to be upgrading machines piecemeal the way the author…

Even buying new you're often far better off buying a low-spec device and upgrading it than buying a laptop with the specs you want.

True for individuals who are unable to value their time, but I doubt you'd find an IT industry professional who agreed. You buy the machine with the support contract and you get the supported parts and you don't touch them. Modern designs don't even have replaceable RAM, for good reasons and not as some kind of conspiracy.

Re: Design quirks, limited parts, and other ways Chromebooks frustrate repairs

#64

Post by qbasic_forever »

jeffbee wrote: post #60
qbasic_forever wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the peripheral has to have a Linux driver or support, and for a cheap laptop a manufacturer is definitely not going to hire someone to custom port a Windows driver to Linux. They're going to pull something off the shelf that already works with Linux.

But things like MIPI cameras don't work in any Linux other than ChromeOS. The open source partisans are still faffing around with their obsolete APIs, while ChromeOS discards the political aspect and just ships Intel's blob. That's why machines like the Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 10 are not on the ChromeOS Flex certified models list, and their webcams don't work in any other distro either, but there are tons of Chromeboo…

It sounds like Intel is dragging its feet releasing an open source driver for those cameras. But as usual if you use a bleeding edge distro like Arch it's just mashing in a few AURs and you'll have support: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=280559

Re: Design quirks, limited parts, and other ways Chromebooks frustrate repairs

#67

Post by ghaff »

jeffbee wrote: post #32
TOMDM wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be out of touch, but do people really expect a $200 laptop to last more than a few years?

In daily use by children! Both of these articles, by the same author, fail to engage with the economic design point of the Chromebook. Only the most bozotic k-12 IT department is scrounging keyboards on eBay. The normal people bought their Chromebooks from CDW with 4-years repair or replace contracts, and they don’t care where the parts come from. And nobody wants to be upgrading machines piecemeal the way the author…

Yeah. The article tosses out this one anecdote of a Windows laptop being easy to fix but I guarantee no K-12 IT department is doing bootleg ChromeBook repairs. Also the main alternative here is probably a tablet not a Windows much less a Linux laptop.

As for the life cycle I think laptops are on something like a 3 or 4 year refresh cycle where I work though in practice it’s pretty loose.

Re: Design quirks, limited parts, and other ways Chromebooks frustrate repairs

#68

Post by ghaff »

smoldesu wrote: post #4

4 years isn't that bad. I'd wager the average Intel Macbook is going to run out of support sooner.

My 2015 Intel Macs supported new OSs until the last version. They still get some updates and I make a point of basically just using them as browsers.

Re: Design quirks, limited parts, and other ways Chromebooks frustrate repairs

#69

Post by mardifoufs »

pjmlp wrote: post #46
matheusmoreira wrote: post #3

It's weird to see Google getting picked on for this. Other manufacturers are a lot worse and provide a lot less guarantees about updates.

My 2009 bought laptops keep getting updates.

If you're using linux (though you could on chromebooks too)!

Otherwise, that's only until 2025, when Windows 10 support stops. Considering microsoft decided that throwing away tens of millions of devices is worth it in the name of security (while touting how green Windows 11 is, lol).

Re: Design quirks, limited parts, and other ways Chromebooks frustrate repairs

#70

Post by quag »

hugelgupf wrote: post #48

I don't really get their headline. Google extended the AUE to 8 years. They're complaining that most Chromebooks only have 4 years of software life left. Are they buying devices released 4 years ago? Or refurbished devices?

I bought a chromebook in 2017 that I love. AUE is up in a few months. The OS has improved leaps and bounds since I got it. I wish it would keep getting updates.

Sadly it’s hard to flash a new boot loader as the write protect screw is in a difficult place and I’ll likely break something trying to get to it. I don’t know what I’ll do when AUE hits.

I guess it’ll be like my first gen iPad which I’m forced to use as a clock as there is little else I can do with the great hardware with locked down software.

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