Is this Chromebook about to die? Why Google’s expiration dates matter
Don’t get stuck with a short-lived lemon.
If you’re the kind of person who looks at the milk carton expiration date or squeezes the bread before you buy it, then you’ll want to buy a Chromebook with a long life ahead of it. Google publishes expiration dates for Chromebooks on its support site (see fave.co/3kEnrN6). But rather than drill down into each Chrome OS device maker’s page to find out if just one particular Chomebook was expiring, we compiled a list of every single device
and then sorted it by expiration date.
We found 51 expired devices, another 35 with just one year left of support. Another 29 had two years of ‘life’ left and another 13 with less than three years. Frankly, that’s a lot of Chromebooks you could potentially purchase that will no longer get updates very soon after you buy it. All told, not counting the already expired Chromebooks, there’s 77 we think you may want to avoid right now. Our colleagues at PCWorld have compiled a full list at fave.co/3mHgEUG.
WHAT IS A CHROMEBOOK’S LIFESPAN?
The concept of an expired computer itself isn’t new, but Chrome OS has taken heat for years over it. Since Chromebooks are essentially low-cost hardware running a very lightweight Linux operating system as a vessel for the Chrome browser, few expected them to expire.
What’s a bit different with Chromebooks is that the hardware itself expires. With an ‘expired Windows 7 laptop’, for example, you can simply buy Windows 10 and keep using the laptop rather than buying a new one. With a Chromebook there is no option to buy an updated version of Chrome OS – the only answer to continue getting updates from Google is to buy a new one.
Google’s End of Life Policy (as it was called before the less terminal-sounding ‘Auto Update Policy’) first offered five years of OS and security updates. Google later changed it to six-and-a-half years, and now it’s eight years. Kind of.
IT’S NOT REALLY ‘8 YEARS’ ON NEW CHROMEBOOKS
Even the ‘Eight years’ the newest Chromebook is supposed to last isn’t necessarily eight years in your actual hands. The lifeclock of every
Chromebook is tied to an introduction window and, like milk on a shelf, it’s running even if no one has bought it.
For example, a Lenovo Chromebook Duet announced in May and released in June has an expiration date of June 2028. If you bought it today, you’d get about eight years. If you bought that same Chromebook Duet in June of 2021, you’d get seven years of updates. Buy a brand-new, never-touched Duet in 2025 and you’d get only three years.
We suspect the June 2028 deadline will hold for the majority of Chromebooks announced over the next 12 months. Looking at Google’s list of Chrome OS devices, they tend to also expire in June or August.
WHAT HAPPENS TO AN EXPIRED CHROMEBOOK
Once a Chromebook expires, you no longer get updates. Period. Ever. That’s different from Microsoft, which updated Windows 7 on its last day. Intel even recently issued a security update for PCs running Windows 7, 8 and 10, so you do get some support.
The most important reason to keep your PC, Mac or Chromebook updated today is security. All computers are under constant attack and updating it is the first line of defence. With an expired Chromebook, you lose that defence.
For people used to Windows and macOS, that could be enough to make you think an expired Chromebook should be crossed off the list. But to be fair, Chromebooks are still one of the most secure consumer laptops around, and you could argue that an expired Chromebook might even be more secure than updated Windows or macOS laptops. In 10 years, only 55 security exploits have been documented for Chrome OS. Apple’s OS X has 2,212 listed
vulnerabilities from 1999 until today and Microsoft Windows has 6,814 since 1999.
Security risks are just one problem. An unsupported browser means you get left behind by websites, too. For example, on the original Google Chromebook Pixel (which expired in 2018), the version of Chrome it runs will no longer let you watch Netflix. For a typical consumer who isn’t going to open the laptop up, unlock the OS write protect and install CloudReady, the only way to watch a Netflix movie is to buy a new Chromebook. Disney+ also rejected the 2013 Pixel. Eat your heart out, because you can still watch Netflix or Disney+ on a 2013-era Windows PC or MacBook. Meanwhile, Nvidia’s nifty GeForce Now game streaming service requires Chrome OS 77 and up, which was released late last year. If you’re on an older version, you can’t use GeForce Now, full stop. As time goes on, you can bet more Chromebooks on the list will also be abandoned.
NEARLY EXPIRED CHROMEBOOKS ARE STILL BEING SOLD
The unstated mess in all this is that you can still buy many Chromebooks that are nearing the end of their lives. We did spot-checks of older models and found that generally it’s pretty hard to buy a very old (five years or older) Chromebook. What you will find, however, are a lot of used Chromebooks with expiration dates of June 2022 can still be found in online stores.
HOW TO BUY A FRESH CHROMEBOOK
To get a Chromebook that you know will get longer term support, you should first look at PCWorld’s list (see fave. co/3mHgEUG). If, for example, £300 for a Chromebook with three years of updates left is fine with you, you can pick out one like the Asus Chromebook Flip C101PA (fave.co/2RSHfji). We wouldn’t advise buying a Chromebook with less than three years of updates left on the clock if you can help it.