New Chromebooks will get 8 years of OS support

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Talk about putting your money where your mouth is…. Yesterday, the folks at Google dropped quite the bombshell: When we first launched Chromebooks,
[See the full post at: New Chromebooks will get 8 years of OS support]

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jburk07, GreatAndPowerfulTech

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woody wrote:

Talk about putting your money where your mouth is…. Yesterday, the folks at Google dropped quite the bombshell:

Really? I first installed Windows 10 1507 in mid-2015.  I’m now on Windows 10 1909 in mid-January, 2020, with another Windows 10 upgrade coming soon.  I still recall the announcement that Windows 10 will be the last Windows, and Microsoft is continually upgrading Windows 10.

I think the ball has been in Google’s court all along, and they’re playing catch up.  Yes, I’ve read the techy report horror stories, but have yet to experience any.  The search box at the top right of File Explorer won’t take right-click Paste, but it will take Ctrl + V Paste.  And Search still works, I just don’t use it.

I have five installations on 1909, and there’s this.  Two laptops used without interruption or horror stories for five years, updated/upgraded “After hours” from 1507 to currently 1809.  I fully expect that, come May or thereabouts, they will quietly get upgraded once again.  In other words, Windows 10 has been continuously supported since RTM, and according to Microsoft, that support will continue.

I have no intention of ever buying a Chromebook, so what Google does with Chromebook isn’t going to affect me in any way.  I’m completely comfortable with Windows 10, “The sky is falling” notwithstanding.  I came to the conclusion a few years ago that I have to be my own “expert”, since the advice offered by the tech community simply did not comport with my own experiences and endeavors with Windows since the XP days.

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KWGuy, Win7and10

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[Win7and10]

I have held off on a Chromebook, only because of the printing options and all the Google docs.

Does anyone know if the new Chromebooks can support printers via USB and do Chromebooks offer any type of document options rather than the Google play store and the GMAIL account?

Win 10 Home 22H2

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Win7and10.

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Chromebooks support USB and/or WiFi-enabled printers. Non-Google application options are primarily limited to cloud-based apps like MS Office online.

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Win7and10 wrote:

Does anyone know if the new Chromebooks can support printers via USB

First off, I would find out which Chromebook you want, then search online for a printer that connects both wirelessly and direct through usb with that particular model. You can also go to a printer’s manufacturer website and look for printers compatible with the Chromebook you’re interested in.

As far as printers go, I have an older Canon that connects via usb to my PC and it also works with my Mac. When I tried to hook it up to my Acer Chromebook it wouldn’t recognize it as being compatible so I took steps outlined here https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/7225252?hl=en but it still wouldn’t take it. After doing some searching around on Google, I went to the Canon site to check on compatibility and I found it does not support my particular Canon printer model. I have another printer that is wireless and works with my Chromebook. It uses Cloud Print and can also be connected directly to the computer via usb. However, Google is planning on pulling Cloud Print off the wireless print grid by the end of 2020. You can still connect wirelessly without Cloud Print, and like I said, the newer wireless printer I have also connects directly with usb.

Here is a list of printers that work wirelessly and through Cloud Print with Chromebook. https://www.secretasianman.com/best-printer-for-chromebook/

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jburk07, KWGuy

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There is an app from HP that allows many HP printers, even many old ones to print from a Chromebook over a USB cable, often requiring a USB-C to USB cable or adapter.  Some other printers have something similar, but the HP support is the most comprehensive.

Google cloud print has been announced to be ended December 2020, you will be seeing a shift back towards other methods like USB or wireless printing in some other form.

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It looks like they will get 8 years of OS support starting on or about the time when that model was introduced… not 8 years from the time that the user bought the machine, like a warranty.

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b

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I bought this Windows 7 dell studio XPS 8100 in 2010 and used the free upgrade to Windows 10 in 2016.  I’m in the 10th year of OS support and counting.

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Indeed, that’s one area in which MS has led for a while now among the proprietary OSes (and Chrome OS, like the browser from which it takes its name, is a proprietary product built on an open source base).  Certainly, 8 years is better than 6, but beyond that point, Google cuts off support not because Chrome OS has evolved beyond the hardware of the Chromebook in question, but “just because.” And that just really rubs me the wrong way! If the new OS is compatible with the old hardware, I bristle at the planned obsolescence of an arbitrary cut-off date.

With Windows PCs, not only did you get up to two more years than that from the start, but you could also usually upgrade to a newer version of Windows yourself, and it’s not limited because of some circled date on a calendar.  In your case, the new version (10) was a free upgrade, but even before that, it was feasible to upgrade to a new version of Windows… it just cost more.  The odds were good that the new Windows would work with the old hardware, even hardware that was new several generations of Windows ago.

My Asus F8sn laptop came with Vista, but it spent most of its life running XP.  I upgraded it to 7, then to 8.1, and I did allow it to upgrade to 10 to secure the digital entitlement before the free upgrade period officially ran out (before anyone knew it was not really going to end).  It ran fine with 10; everything worked as it was supposed to from the first boot, including the fingerprint reader.  Five generations of Windows that ran equally well on the same PC.  Not bad.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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jburk07, AlexEiffel, Myst, b

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If Google Sheets ever gets to the level of formulas and Macros Excel can use, Windows might be in trouble.

Not until then, though.

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