In April of 2023, the consumer advocate group US PIRG Education Fund released a report titled “Chromebook Churn”, which strongly implied that Chromebooks, in general, are wasteful and expensive devices, which are “a disaster for the environment and fuel the e-waste crisis.” The report mentioned calculations for the emissions and taxpayer dollars consumed by Chromebooks, and concluded that these could be satisfactorily reduced by following the report’s recommended action plan.
BOOOOOOORING! But hear my out, I’ll try to make this interesting.
The result of the report was a million headlines, from all the Chrome OS haters out there. For example, Vice carried a story with the headline, “Chromebooks Are Trash: (Literally)”. Incidentally, subsequent to publishing that headline, Vice did a round of layoffs and declared bankruptcy. So one might ask, who is trash now?
Anyway, the PIRG Report, which I have read, may be found here. It is authored by one Lucas Rockett Gutterman (real name). Here is Gutterman, outside of a Google office somewhere, addressing a crowd of at least 4, and possibly even 5 additional persons:
I have some problems with the report. First of all, how does the author go around calling himself Lucas Rockett Gutterman? That’s so many syllables. Obviously, you should drop the Gutterman part (I assume Rockett and Gutterman are both last names). The Gutterman side of the family will understand if you just start going by Lucas Rockett. The Rockettman!! Basically the opposite of Gutterman, right?
So already, we see evidence of clouded judgement.
Next, I reject the beginning premise of his report. The executive summary begins:
“Especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the widespread implementation of remote learning, school districts have looked for a budget laptop that they can buy en masse and then distribute to students to complete their work. In many cases, they have turned to Chromebooks. However, three years after this huge spike in purchases, schools are beginning to see their Chromebook fleets fail, creating piles of electronic waste and saddling schools with additional costs.”
So, wait a minute. We, as a nation, temporarily switched to remote learning. In those unprecedented and challenging times (sorry if those words give you traumatic 2020 flashbacks), schools scrambled to keep things going, for the kids. Chromebooks were available, and up to the task of providing a stop-gap way to help kids, until we sorted that mess out.
There’s no need to say, “however, three years later". Three years later is irrelevant. The job of any Chromebooks acquired during that 2020 “huge spike in purchases,” was to hold kids over, just for a few months. I’ll refrain from any sarcastic “15 days to stop the spread” jokes here (of which I have many), but surely 3 years well exceeds the scope of the mission.
The report alleges there is a “dark side to Chromebooks” in that “they don’t last as long as they should.” I ask, who is to say how long a Chromebook *should* last? I’d say that, within the 2020 scenario, a Chromebook *should* last about 2 years, in order to outlast the initial scramble, and allow time for a better plan going forward. And in buying a laptop that needs to last two years, I bet Chromebooks were a clear cost leader.
In my opinion, Chromebooks stepped up and saved the day, as a temporary, budget solution. Mission accomplished. Well done. That’ll do, Chromebook. That’ll do.
While the 2020 spike is a big part of what the report addresses, there were also concerns raised about their on-going use in schools, aside from the temporary remote-learning use-case.
The PIRG report lists three main factors that lead to what Gutterman considers unacceptable churn:
Manufacturers typically do not sell new spare parts or otherwise support repair.
Computers have a built-in “death date,” after which software support ends.
Design choices frustrate repair and reuse.
Points 1 and 3 are closely related, so I’ll address those together.
1. “Manufactures typically do not sell new spare parts or otherwise support repair” and 3. “Design choices frustrate repair and reuse”
The first question we need to ask is what are we comparing this to? What’s the baseline? How can we really compare the repairability of all Chromebook hardware vs all similarly priced and similarly capable alternatives?
The report compares some individual Chromebooks to see how easily parts from one model year are compatible with parts from a subsequent year. However, there’s no similar effort from PIRG, to run that experiment with Windows devices. As such, they might as well not even have bothered with this part of the report, as it’s missing half the data necessary to even begin to be meaningful.
Additional empirical evidence Gutterman presents is from another PIRG report that evaluated data from France. The French, apparently, collect data about the relative repairability of things, and according to this data, Chromebooks are, relatively, less repairable.
We simply can’t trust that data, because it is from France. The French don’t know anything about anything, other than food. I especially don’t trust France about evaluating how to make things repairable. Back in the 80s, French auto manufacturer Renault attempted to send some of their cars here. My family somehow acquired a Renault Medallion. That was the biggest pile of dog doo of a car that I’ve ever experienced, despite having had only about 30,000 miles on it. Repairs could not save it. That car would randomly send smoke into the cabin through the vents, and occasionally, the headlights system would mysteriously shut off while you were driving it at night, and these things were merely symptoms of deeper mechanical issues. One might say it was unsafe at any speed.
Therefore, France, as a nation, can just shut the heck up about repairability until they find a way to manufacture a car that is worthy of import to the USA. Get out of here with your French data, Gutterman.
Another thing is that repairability is going to vary with make and model. For example, you may currently purchase the Framework Chromebook, which is incredibly repairable. It is designed so that it can be the last Chromebook you will ever buy. All of the critical components are tailored for optimal ease of replacement. It’s like it is built out of Lego parts - everything, from the ports, to the display, to the processor, snaps on and off. Pretty cool.
The catch is, such a design takes care and planning, which costs money. Thus, the wonderful Framework Chromebook costs $999, and I doubt that it’s a budgetarily viable option for schools, just like a MacBook Air - also very strong on repairability- is often probably not an option.
Repairability costs money, and school tech admins have the task of running a cost/benefit analysis in choosing devices. If you choose to spend $1,000 on a Framework Chromebook for a student, you’re gambling that it will last many years. If a catastrophic event occurs to that laptop when it’s just 3 years old, you’re out $1,000. All that fantastic, built-to-last, repairability goes out the window. Literally, out the window from the backseat of the car where two kids were fighting over it.
Some Chromebooks are available at a price point optimized for disposability, rather than repairability. And that makes a ton of sense, because I’m guessing that a good number of the injuries sustained by public school laptops are catastrophic/fatal. There’s no coming back from being run over by a Honda Odyssey, dropped into the sewer, or dismantled by a Rottweiller.
You can have all the spare parts in the world, and tons of thought go into the design to make repairs simple, but that’s probably not going to stop a good number of education laptops from ending up in a landfill after 4 to 5 years, with stove-top fried parts, and keyboards stuffed with honey and Play-Doh.
2. “Computers have a built-in ‘death date,’ after which software support ends”
I’m typing this whole post on my Asus Chromebook, which has a “death date” (que dramatic!) just weeks from today, in June 2023. It’s called an “Automatic Update Expiration” (AUE) date, not a “death date.” by the way. And I knew about the AUE date when I bought the machine.
How did I know? Simply because I’m not a complete and total moron when I make purchases like that, and AUE dates are Chromebooks 101.
PIRG’s report assumes that school administrators are hopeless idiots, who can’t do the slightest research before purchasing a fleet of laptops:
“What is clear is that the AUE dates can take consumers by surprise. When consumers or schools buy a used or refurbished Chromebook thinking they’re getting a great deal, they can be surprised to learn their new laptop expires after a year. As one school official in California shared with PIRG, while the expiration date for a given model might be set for seven years, by the time his school buys their laptops, expiration is only four to five years away.”
Who in the world is getting taken by surprise with AUE dates? It’s not a secret. What’s next from PIRG, a report on bananas? “While bananas can last weeks, one guy in the grocery store shared with me that by the time you purchase the banana, bring it home, and let it sit around for a week, it may expire in just a couple days.”
I guess I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that some California schools never checked the AUE date, and then took two years from putting the Chromebook into the shopping cart, to checking out. That’s irresponsible and negligent behavior, and a problem that needs to be fixed by replacing such incompetent schools personnel. Pay attention to your local school board elections!
Even supposing the expiration is four to five years away, I’d bet for some schools, that proposition still make sense, if the price is adjusted accordingly. The way kids are going to treat a thing - that they’ve been handed for free and will have no sense of responsibility for - is not conducive to long life expectancy. It goes back to cost analysis. Is it worth it for a school to give every child a MacBook Air that’s going to potentially run smoothly for 15 years, if cared for properly? Or is that a bit of a gamble, since once the MacBook Air is lost, stolen, or simply deliberately destroyed by an emotionally unstable child, that’s the end of it? Are we better off gambling on something that’s more on the disposable side of the spectrum? If we’re being real, then yes.
Another problem with Gutterman’s report is the notion that AUE dates are arbitrary. From what I can tell, that assessment is based entirely on the testimony of a repair guy named Justin:
Some technicians are skeptical of Chromebooks’ AUE dates. As Justin Millman, a repair technician who estimates he services 5,000 devices for schools a month, told PIRG in an interview, “the hardware hasn't changed all that much in seven years, the AUE dates are arbitrary.”
Well that settles it. Justin Millman has spoken. Google can just flip a switch and make all Chromebooks work twice as long.
“AUE dates are a choice. In 2016, a Google spokesperson told PCWorld that the end-of-life dates are “not a firm cut-off” and in 2019, Google extended the life of many of its Chromebooks.”
Yeah, it’s “a choice,” but the choice has costs associated. Ferrari could “choose” to give me ten new cars, but why would they do that? Chromebooks work superbly well, right up to the AUE date; that’s not an accident. It’s the result of careful software engineering. There are costs associated with it. The developers need to make sure that every update they make to Chrome OS works smoothly with every supported device. For PIRG’s next report, I suggest Gutterman read this Wikipedia Entry for Backwards Compatibility, and share his findings.
In 2019, some Chromebooks got an extra year of life. That is because 5 years seemed a little short, and the market demanded closer to 7. As far as I can tell, the market doesn’t currently call for the 10 year life that Gutterman recommends.
My laptop’s AUE seemed reasonable when I bought it. Things break, over time, and a 5-6 year window is pretty reasonable, especially for the price. We replace our phones every two years, and the Windows PCs I get at work never last me 6 years. I think my per-year cost of operation has been phenomenal on this Chromebook.
Conclusion
I don’t think Google can just snap their fingers and add years to the life of all Chromebooks. I actually think it is charmingly naive to assert that to be the case. I’m a big fan of high-quality, long-lasting electronics, but those things have a price, and it’s usually not wise to give them to children.
As for the environmental impact, that discussion is outside the scope of my non-political and happy-go-lucky blog. Best I can do is say that we can’t assume laptops with the potential to last longer, will actually last “longer enough” - in the hands of public school kids - to have a significant environmental impact. In other words, as I’ve been saying ad naseum, education devices take too much abuse. No matter how well-built and repairable the thing is, and what the abundance of spare parts looks like, the whole thing is going in the trash in 3 to 4 years. It’s simply a matter of how expensive you want that trash to be.
Chromebooks provide an excellent computing experience at an accessible price point. The actions that PIRG suggests would simply make Chromebooks cost more. The environmental impact would be about the same, because, like I keep saying, kids are going to destroy any laptop within 3 to four years whether its a plastic Chromebook or a gold-plated Mac.
As we dive into a recession, affordable products are badly needed. PIRG is in this respect not acting as a consumer advocate, but as an elitist advocate. Imagine a world where good computers only go to rich snobs who live in high-rise apartments on the coast - the types of guys who are oblivious to Ford vs Chevy truck rivalries. Is that what we want?
In closing, I will add that the specific 2020 spike in Chromebook purchases, and all of its impacts to taxpayers and the environment, could have been avoided entirely, by letting the kids stay in school. In retrospect, it is clear now that it was a mistake to switch to remote learning. People I’d remember as being 2020 vocal advocates of school closure now infamously deny that stance, so I think that removes this take from the realm of political opinion, to simple, cold, reality.
And guess who urgently called for a shut-down in the first place? PIRG. It’s still posted on their own website:
https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/shut-down-start-over-do-it-right/
I’ll leave with this. Stop giving us advice, on anything PIRG. The best thing for consumers, in my opinion, would be for you to fold, liquidate, and stop littering the internet with these reports, which are themselves, e-waste.