Best comment in the Ars comments:

> Every article mentioning Chromebooks is followed up by a bunch of people who don't use or like Chromebooks commenting about how useless they are, followed by retorts from those who do own, use, and like Chromebooks pointing out how great they are. Isn't there the possibility that there are people in the world with different equipment requirements and preferences than yours?

As someone who did a lot of friends & family tech support for Windows XP and 7 era computers, I also agree wholeheartedly with:

> My one piece of advice is to switch people you provide tech support to. Moving my father to a Chromebook has decreased my support requirements by 90%. Plus, I have much less worry about him doing something that completely locks the computer or requires a complete system install and wipe.

Though nowadays usually an iPad will also do fine.

> Though nowadays usually an iPad will also do fine.

iPads tend to cost about twice/thrice the price of a Chromebook if you want a keyboard with your computer.

Lenovo's great Duet comes with the keyboard for like 290EUR.

And ergonomically a laptop is better for writing and whatever purposes there may be.

In the US, the Duet is frequently on sale for around $200 to $250. Has a great screen, all metal construction, and a passable keyboard. I'm rather fond of mine. End up using it more than the iPad.

This doesn't seem like a huge surprise. Demand for Chromebooks went through the roof due to children doing remote learning during Covid, and they, by and large, have the Chromebooks they need now, and are beginning to go back to school. That demand is going to tail off.

The jump in sales two years ago should have always been seen as a temporary spike due to circumstances, not the new normal. They've still sold a heck of a lot of Chromebooks and gained marketshare.

I mean, what do they expect? People already have their Chromebooks, they're set for a decade, it's not like power or utilities with recurring revenue ...

> set for a decade

Not really, the normal support life is 6.5 years from first manufacture, I've seen chrome devices for sale with less than 2 years support remaining.

https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en

"support" is overrated. Who needs support for Google Chrome? People will use them until they can't use them anymore.

When my Chromebook fell out of "support" it became useless. Like, I couldn't open a console or run Crouton to do what I needed to do. The hardware was fine, just Google remotely broke my machine. I liked my Chromebook, but will never get another one. I'm happy with my used Thinkpad that cost about as much as the Chromebook. I'm finished with Google.

I'm in the same boat on not buying new Chromebooks. I was able to convert one of my old x86 one into a Linux machine by flashing the bios, but converting Arm ones is even less certain.

If you're a school district, presumably a quarter of your users graduate every year and are replaced by new students. Which means new chromebooks.

Albeit not as many as they needed at the start of the pandemic.

> Which means new chromebooks.

They'll most likely reuse them for many years, OR have a student keep a single chromebook through many grades. Schools in the US aren't that well funded that they can give every student a free laptop every year.

Students get to keep them in the US?

I can't imagine they re-use four-year-old laptops that have been getting carted around to and from school by teenagers for years. Nobody buys a Celeron laptop with 4GB of RAM thinking they're getting a future-proof system that'll last a decade.

At most, you might issue returned ones to people who lost or broke the one they were issued.

So Chromebooks are predicted to be 36M/240M = 15% of all laptop sales globally in 2021? And that's after "demand plummeting"?

Color me surprised, I thought they were at a couple of %.

And Alexander wept.