• Ewaste or usable – week 5

    Posted on June 5, 2022 at 00:43 CDT by • Comment in the Forums

    Previous posts:  Week 1 here,  Week 2 here

    Week 3 here Week 4 here

    I’m on my final installment of “Ewaste or usable” and this final week is about Chromebook. This one I’ve been the most disappointed with as far as trying to find a life for it after the vendor has officially put it out to pasture. On the old Vista era laptop I was able to repurpose it to get a usable Linux laptop. For this old Chromebook that is now out of date and can’t be updated to the latest, I’m finding it difficult to get it to get it on anything supported. Michael Horowitz had commented in one of the earlier threads that the Chromebook as is would be usable in guest mode as it would wipe the profile each time, but the issue is for each of these older devices is that they have to be usable. In the case of the older Chromebook I originally purchased it to experience the Chrome ecosystem and then when it was finally out of date and could no longer be updated but was still usable, I loaned it to a friend so that she could set it up to be a medical tele-visit device for her sister-in-law during the pandemic. Until the telemedicine software finally would no longer run on that Chromebook it worked out so well for her that it showcased to the friend (who is the tech support for her sister-in-law) that a Chromebook was indeed the best platform for her to be on. Prior to that when she was running a Windows computer, her browser would often be hijacked, her computer would often need to be reinstalled after a year because it had gotten too malware infested. The chromebook laptop with it’s always updated browser/OS was better for her.

    But the drawback is that once the device has gone past it’s prime, you don’t have many options to get it to a supported platform. Then for those that don’t like the idea of big brother Google, there’s that consideration as well.

    Herein lies the other problem with Chromebook. Amazon is still SELLING the model I got back in 2013. It’s totally non supported now and some applications you may intend it to work on, won’t support it anymore. So be careful when purchasing older Chromebooks to see what version it’s on and if it’s still supported. While the device may still be able to surf, you’ll have issues with some applications and google play installs.

    Bottom line if you are interested in ChromeBooks and find one online, watch the date of the OS and make sure you don’t get one that’s already past it’s prime.

    Chromebook
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