#chromebooks — Public Fediverse posts

#USPIRG - #ElectronicWaste Graveyard

Expiring software or server support is responsible for up to 1.7 billion pounds of #EWaste over past decade.

by Nathan Proctor, Lucas Gutterman
April 10, 2025, Updated Jul 14, 2026

"Increasingly, we’re pushed to trash tech that should still work, such as #Chromebooks, phones, and smart home devices, just because the software has expired or lost support. This database lists more than 100 tech products that have stopped working after manufacturers dropped support. It calculates the total weight of all these dead devices which have joined the 68 million tons of electronic waste disposed of each year.

"When software expires, or web cloud services end, consumers and schools are pushed to replace devices that should still work. For example, our 'Chromebook Churn' report found that tens of thousands of laptops were being replaced by schools because the software had expired. Since the graveyard was released in 2025, we have tracked a wave of new product shutdowns, some affecting a handful of niche gadgets, and one, Microsoft’s end of support for Windows 10, affecting 400 million computers at once.

"We now estimate that up to 1.7 billion pounds of electronic waste has been created by expired software and canceled cloud services since 2014. The largest contributor by far was the expiration of #Windows10 resulting in up to 1.6 billion pounds of electronic waste from PCs that can’t upgrade to #Windows11.

"13 #AmazonKindle models have also joined the graveyard this year. On May 20, 2026, Amazon cut off store access for 13 older Kindle models released between 2007 and 2012 — devices that, in many cases, are still being used daily by their original owners more than a decade later. The e-readers still turn on, still display books already downloaded, and still hold a charge. What they can no longer do is buy or download anything new, effectively ending their useful life as e-readers for many owners. Amazon’s shutdown means these e-readers can’t even borrow books from users’ local public #libraries.

"For the planet, this lack of support results in a death by a thousand server support cuts. This e-waste adds up. At the very least we need lifetime transparency for tech—we should know how long manufacturers guarantee the tech we buy will work before we buy it."

Read more:
https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/electronic-waste-graveyard/

#SolarPunkSunday #RightToRepair #RightToRepairLaws #PlannedObsolescence #FixIt #ReuseRepairRestore

Associated Press: Google denies involvement in $125 million Chromebook graft case in Indonesia. “Google’s investment in Indonesia’s ride-hailing company GoTo wasn’t in anyway connected to the country’s Education Ministry’s decision to procure Chromebooks for schools during COVID-19 pandemic, former Google executives testified in court on Monday.”

There's evidence that the first Chromebooks with Qualcomm Snapdragon X chips could be on the way, although so far we're just seeing the X1-P42-100 though, which is one of the lower-performance Snapdragon X chips. https://chromeunboxed.com/finally-snapdragon-x-plus-chromebooks-are-on-the-way/ #Chromebooks #Qualcomm #SnapdragonX

3. #ChromiumOS

The Dark Horse

Pros:
- #Chromebooks are pretty common now
- Most of the #security, less of the #Google
- It's just the web

Cons:
- It's just the web
- Not hackable / locked down beyond the point of curiosity
- Google
- Hardware restrictions?
- Weak ecosystem