• Chromebook expiration dates

    Posted on August 22, 2019 at 06:52 CDT by • Comment in the Forums

    Just read an article by Tim Anderson in The Reg that explains how to find your Chromebook’s “Auto Update Expiration” date.

    every Chromebook has an “Auto Update Expiration (AUE) Date” after which the operating system is unsupported by Google.

    That’s a concept every Windows user should understand – but the big difference is that Google sets the expiration date before the machine is put on sale. Microsoft arbitrarily decides when a specific chip goes out of support – and the decision is made way after initial release.

    I’ve seen ads for Chromebooks lately that include the AUE expiration date. But if you don’t know your Chromebook’s expiration date, it’s easy to look up. Google has a readily accessible list of machines and their expiration dates.

    If you can’t match up your Chromebook’s specific model name with an expiration date on the list, there’s an additional trick in The Reg article that shows you how to query the OS to get the correct model name. For most people, though, simply knowing which machine you have is enough to get you a definitive answer on when support ends.

    Per Anderson:

    You can continue to use your Chromebook after the AUE but the OS will be frozen in time and Google’s warnings above will apply. The device will show a notification along the lines of: “This device will no longer receive the latest software updates. Please consider upgrading.” … Security is an issue, though a Chromebook is one of the more secure devices out there thanks to the sandboxing of applications and other techniques, so it is less serious than it would be for, say, a Windows PC.

    My all-time favorite Chromebook fell off the AUE turnip truck more than a year ago. It’s still humming along, getting daily workouts both from me and my nine-year-old.

    Thx, @Kirsty

    Chromebook
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