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Google details a list of Chromebooks and their support end-date in a single list [0]. I randomly picked a couple with support ending this year and it seems like a decent chunk of the devices being EOLed in 2020 were released in ~2015. ~5 years of support for a <$300 laptop is pretty good IMO.

[0]: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366#Acer&AOpe...

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It's decent from an economic standpoint, but it's still environmentally wasteful, and among people buying a $300 laptop, there's probably a decent number who would have a difficult time paying to replace it. Also, the actual hardware of laptops hasn't changed that quickly in a long time, and when compared to Windows (which runs on basically anything), and macOS (which officially runs on 7-8 year old devices, and can be patched to run on older ones), the ChromeOS update policy looks kind of silly to me. I'm writing this comment on a non-Chromebook laptop that was purchased in 2015 and still works perfectly fine; it's crazy to me that I would no longer be able to use it because of an arbitrary limit on software updates.

I have a couple of Thinkpad T60 laptops, I think they were made in 2006 or 2007. Perhaps surprisingly, they are perfectly usable for many tasks. The obvious big exception is the "modern" web, but that can actually be a benefit when you want to put in some focused time and avoid distractions. Coincidentally, a lot of my best work in the recent past has been done on one of these antiques or one of my only-slightly-newer Thinkpads.

It's pretty amazing if you consider what it would be like using a 13 or 14 year old computer in 2006-7.

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