In a spacious warehouse located in East Oakland, a group of industrious students have spent their summer days tinkering with laptops. These teenagers are participants in Oakland Unified’s tech repair internship program, and their primary task has been to fix various issues with laptops, such as broken screens, faulty keyboards, and tangled wiring. However, there’s one problem that has proven to be a challenge for these tech interns: expired Chromebooks.
Chromebooks, despite being technologically advanced, come with a built-in software death date. After three to six years from their release, older versions of these affordable computers become useless due to the expiration of their software. This means that even though the hardware is fully functional, an expired Chromebook will no longer receive the necessary software updates, rendering basic websites and applications inaccessible.
“They’re designed to be disposable,” explains Sam Berg, Oakland Unified’s computer science coordinator and the architect behind the district’s tech repair internship. “It’s like planned obsolescence.” The demand for Chromebooks skyrocketed in 2020 after the onset of the pandemic. As a more budget-friendly alternative to traditional laptops, these devices were widely embraced by school districts to ensure that students could connect with their classes. According to the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG), global Chromebook sales increased by nearly 300% by the end of 2020. Additionally, by March 2021, 90% of school districts in America claimed to provide digital learning devices to their middle and high school students, with half of them relying exclusively on Chromebooks.
Unfortunately, three years later, thousands of these laptops have become obsolete. This summer, 13 more Chromebook models will reach their death dates, followed by 51 models next summer. Maritsa Cortez, a 17-year-old member of the Oakland Unified program, describes this situation as a wasteful use of money and resources. Her team had already recycled 451 expired Chromebooks by mid-July, a mere fraction of the 3,851 laptops they replaced last year.
According to a Google spokesperson, the death dates serve an important purpose. Chromebooks require regular software updates, including security patches, but older devices often lack the capability to support these updates. Peter Du, the communications manager for ChromeOS, explains, “These updates depend on many device-specific non-Google hardware and software providers that work with Google to provide the highest level of security and stability support. For this reason, older Chrome devices cannot receive updates indefinitely to enable new OS and browser features.”
Over the next five years, Oakland Unified estimates that 40,000 of its Chromebooks will expire. This issue is not unique to Oakland; other school districts are facing similar challenges. The Torrance Unified School District in Southern California alone plans to retire more than 20,000 Chromebooks. Capistrano Unified, another district in the region, has allocated $4.2 million for purchasing new Chromebooks and covering employee repair costs for the upcoming school year.
Google has made some adjustments in response to this issue. Since 2020, the company has guaranteed an eight-year shelf life for its Chromebooks. This means that the devices Oakland Unified purchased last year have an expiration date of 2029. Piedmont Unified has also acquired newer models that have an eight-year life cycle. However, the older models, which were widely purchased during the early months of the pandemic, remain unaffected. Sander Kushen, a consumer advocate at CALPIRG, explains that the expiration date starts counting from when the laptop is manufactured, not when it is purchased. This means that any laptop model created before 2020 is steadily approaching its expiration date. Furthermore, those using refurbished Chromebooks or recently purchased older models will experience a faster decline in their devices’ lifespan, often without even realizing it.
Extending the life of devices sold in California in 2020 alone could save the state’s schools $225 million, according to CALPIRG. Nationally, that number would rise to $1.8 billion. While school districts cannot address the issue of expiration dates, many strive to make the most of their Chromebooks. For example, this year, the Oakland students have repaired over 1,300 damaged laptops, compared to nearly 4,000 last year. Nevertheless, they face an uphill battle. A recent analysis by CALPIRG revealed that Chromebooks are more difficult to repair than other laptops due to the scarcity and high cost of spare, affordable, and compatible parts. For instance, one-third of replaceable keyboard options cost around $90, nearly half the price of a laptop.
In light of these challenges, some school districts have explored alternative solutions. The San Ramon Valley Unified School District collects and replaces laptops every five years but keeps older models for administrative tasks until they need recycling. Piedmont Unified uses older models as loaners during repairs or assigns them to programs with light technology usage. They also salvage parts from older models in partnership with parent clubs before selling the unusable laptops as e-waste.
Kimathi Bradford, a 16-year-old tech repair intern in Oakland, even explored the possibility of replacing the outdated Chromebook software with a non-Google brand. However, he found the process to be cumbersome and the open-source replacement software to be subpar. “It’s like the Fritos of software,” Kimathi jokes. “No one really wants to use it.” While Kimathi appreciates his district’s recycling efforts, like many on his team, he questions why the software life of older models cannot be extended. “School districts are already dealing with enough in their budgets. They shouldn’t have to discard perfectly good laptops,” says Kushen. “We expect expiration dates for milk, but not for laptops.”
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