Millions of Chromebooks bought during the 2020 Covid pandemic are rapidly breaking. Photo: File
Washington: A public interest organization in the US has said that millions of Chromebooks bought in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic were bought as cheap alternatives to laptops, but now three years later they are showing signs of wear and tear. The majority are unrepairable.
In 2020, sales of laptops, Chromebooks, and tablets increased exponentially due to online teaching and working worldwide due to the Corona epidemic and lockdown. In America alone, millions of cheap Chromebooks were bought to save money. Now it is news that after only a few years, they have turned out to be unsustainable, prone to wear and tear and impossible to repair. On the one hand, this is generating electronic waste, on the other hand, one billion 80 million dollars can be saved by repairing all Chromebooks.
Otherwise, this amount will be nothing more than a burden on the tax payers. Although Chromebooks are cheap, they are not repairable. Second, they don’t have Windows, and secondly, they’re harder to upgrade than laptops. Its spare parts are also hard to find.
According to the report, screens, hinges and keyboards are damaged by falling, and school children have suffered the same damage on a large scale. The survey also revealed that even though Chromebooks are cheap, spare parts are very expensive, for example, the Acer Chromebook keyboard (in the US) is available for $90, which is also out of stock.
Therefore, teaching with Chromebooks is a difficult and expensive process. On the other hand, due to the strange conditions of the update by Google company, Chromebooks have also become inoperable. Now it is not possible to sell them anywhere because the operating system is not updated.
The report says companies should make better Chromebooks and ensure supply of spare parts. If 30 million Chromebooks purchased in 2020 are made reusable, not only millions of dollars will be saved, but 4.6 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions will be saved.
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