Chromebook Churn
I read an interesting piece recently about how a big splurge on Chromebooks at the beginning of the pandemic has resulted in an expensive issue three years later: all those little laptops are failing simultaneously.
For context, a Chromebook is a generally underpowered but cheap laptop that uses Google's Chrome OS operating system instead of Windows or MacOS (which are both more monetarily and computationally expense to license and use than the free, lightweight Chrome option).
It achieves this by making the web browser central to the computing experience, so rather than having applications you download and install onto your computer, you mostly just have a browser and as many web-apps as you can use within that browser—but downloading much of anything isn't really an option due to a lack of space (and the operating system’s focus on web-based utilities).
These web-first laptops have a lot of advantages in the right context, including their price tag.
I bought one refurbished for about $80 a year ago, and many of them (especially those used in schools) can be had for around that same price-point, though there are others that're cheaper or more expensive, depending on how fancy you want to be, or how lightweight your needs actually are (I wanted a simple, second machine just for writing and checking email, and it performs those two tasks decently well).
The pandemic pushed everyone online all at once, as schools shut down and frantic administrators (and parents) scrambled to figure out how to keep these kids connected and learning at an important moment in their educational and social lives.
These laptops have a guaranteed software update period of eight years—meaning Google will make sure all new Chromebooks receive security updates, upgrades, etc for eight years after they're released—but the hardware on these things is a lot less resilient, and they’re often on shelves for years after their initial debut.
And because they're so cheap to begin with—most in-school models sell for between $100 and $200—repairing them isn't generally an economically viable option.
A recent report on "Chromebook Churn" showed that a typical replacement keyboard for a $200 Chromebook would cost around $90 or more—about half the cost of the laptop (or about what you would pay for an entirely new, if lower-quality, model).
This is an expensive problem for schools (it was estimated in that same report that doubling the practical lifespan of Chromebooks would save about $1.8 billion for taxpayers because of projected savings to schools, which wouldn't have to replace these laptops as frequently) but also environmentally: the 31 million Chromebooks sold around the world in the first year of the pandemic, alone, are estimated to have produced about 8.9 million tons of CO2 emissions (which is a lot).
A few thoughts on this:
First is that there's a role to play for inexpensive, borderline discardable things, even laptops, but it does help if they're optimized for that role rather than straddling an awkward, in-between spot on the market.
Chromebooks could be produced to last three years, intentionally, and even come with a return box that would allow the user to ship their spent laptop back to the manufacturer (or more likely, a third-party tech-hardware recycler) for recycling or refurbishing, and they'd receive a discount on a new one after that package is shipped.
They could also be built for modularity, though at this point only fairly expensive laptops can manage swappability and easy replaceability of their components. This would get cheaper if more manufacturers played ball, but it's currently in their financial interest to make us buy new computers when some of the parts get old, rather than allowing us to replace just the sluggish components, continuing to use the same keyboard, screen, etc.
Second, this could serve as a good argument for computer subscriptions rather than purchases for schools and other organizations.
These exist, but they're less common than outright purchasing programs (with educational discounts and other benefits) at the moment (Apple is reportedly considering something along these lines).
If used, though, you could get something akin to the aforementioned recycling/refurbishing trade-in system if the school makes a deal with Acer or Google to just send them an entirely new collection of laptops each two years, taking back the old ones and cleaning them up for resale (at a cheaper price), or recycling them for the valuable bits that can be reclaimed (and doing what they can to get rid of the non-salvageable parts in a sustainable fashion).
Finally, I would also argue that this could create space in the market for "invincible" products meant to last forever; which is tricky to do in a space like computing, which seems to iterate so rapidly, but the idea would be to produce incredibly resilient, rugged devices with swappable components and a dramatically simplified setup that's easy to clean and fix (probably components like keyboards and screens that are built to survive children—which is a whole separate concern, unto itself).
These things would need to come with a guaranteed productive lifespan, and the companies behind them would upgrade them accordingly (though the schools and other organizations would likely need to pay membership/maintenance fees, to make this model sustainable).
This product category already exists for worksite laptops, labeled as “rugged” models, but they’re mostly just the same laptop with bigger shells and sturdier moving parts, which doesn’t address these sustainability and larger systemic issues (nor does it result in a machine kids would be likely to enjoy using).
The idea is to find the sweet spot between serviceability, practicality, and economic viability, and it seems like a few on-the-market models have covered a couple of these priorities, but not all three at once.
Chromebooks seem to be in the best spot to eventually hit the whole triangle, but they're not there yet.