PC World - USA (2020-10)

84 PCWorld OCTOBER 2020

FEATURE WHY GOOGLE’S EXPIRATION DATES MATTER

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.

We’ll list those laptops bellow.

WHAT IS A CHROMEBOOK’S

LIFESPAN?

The concept of an expired computer itself isn’t

new, but Chrome OS has taken heat (go.

pcworld.com/tkht) 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 (go.pcworld.com/fwwxp).

What’s a bit different with Chromebooks is

that the hardware itself expires. With an “expired

Windows 7 laptop,” for example, you can simply

I

f you’re the kind of person who looks at

the milk carton expiration date or

squeezes the bread before you buy it,

then you probably don’t want to buy

these 77 Chromebooks. That’s because after

examining every single Chrome OS device

listed in Google’s database, we’ve found a

healthy amount of them that are about as fresh

as a three-day old donut.

Google publishes expiration dates for

Chromebooks on its support site here (go.

pcworld.com/xpdt). But rather than drill down

into each Chrome OS device maker’s page to

find out if just one particular Chromebook 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

As of Aug. 2020, here’s how many ChromeOS

devices are about to expire and when.

With a Chromebook, the OS doesn’t expire—the

actual Chromebook does and you no longer get

updates at all.

Update

Years Left

Number Of Chromebooks

And Chromebox Models

Spoiled 051

About To Spoil 135

Close To Spoiling 229

Not Fresh 313

Fresh 445

Very Fresh 539

Just Left Dairy 651

Just Came

From Cow^712

PCWorld Milk Rating For All

Chromebook Devices In The World