The US PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) Education Fund recently published a letter criticizing Google for its reluctance to update 13 Chromebook models, leaving many with expired laptops.
Back in June 2023parents and environmentalists wrote a letter asking the tech giant for major software updates for Chromebooks. In 2020, school districts across the United States bought a ton of Chromebooks and handed them all out to students as the pandemic moved to remote learning. Everything was fine at first, but in the years since their purchase, the lack of technical support from Google has caused serious problems, even when the hardware is working properly. No new updates mean the laptops are “more vulnerable to attacks and[cannot]access … websites.” a report from the Mercury News says expired Chromebooks can even involuntarily block the use of those “websites and applications.”
Mercury News goes on to explain, “These low-cost computers will expire three to six years after their release.” It’s a short time frame that Lucas Rockett Gutterman, director of the Design to Last initiative, calls “absurd.”
Still being sold
What’s especially damaging to Americans is that these laptops aren’t limited to just schools. In fact, Amazon still sells most of them on their platform. There’s a very real chance you own or recently bought one of these expired Chromebooks, thinking you just scored a great deal. The Acer Chromebook 11, one of the affected laptops, is priced at $64.95 at the time of writing.
The image below is one to look at.
The American PIRG has a list of the 13 expired models on their website, ranging from the Chromebook 11 to the Samsung Chromebook Plus. It seems that only consumer level hardware is for sale. The work-oriented products like the AOpen Chromebook Commercial Tab or the Dell Chromebook 14 for Work are not on Amazon, although you can buy them elsewhere.
We strongly recommend checking out the full list on the US PIRG’s website for more information. Make sure you don’t have one of these faulty laptops.
What Google could do
The PIRG is currently asking Google to “double the lifespan of Chromebooks” by providing much-needed tech support. This could save the US education system as much as $1.8 billion and prevent a ton of e-waste from ending up in landfill. Images posted on the US PIRG website display mountains of presumably dead Chromebook 11s stacked high in the back room of a school.
At the time of writing, Google has not commented on this situation. We’ve reached out to the company to see if it would like to make an official statement about the expired Chromebooks. We also asked Gutterman if he or anyone at the US PIRG is aware of any other affected devices. This story will be updated at a later date.
It’s totally understandable why anyone would want to buy one of these laptops. $65 is a great deal, but saving money shouldn’t come at the cost of greater vulnerability. Instead, check out TechRadar’s list of the best Chromebook deals for August 2023. We’re confident you’ll find something you like