> After the first year, about 1/5 laptops needed major repair. None of them would make it to 5 years.

The second sentenxe doesn't follow the first - it's a flavor of Zeno's paradox, after 5 years, you'll be left with 4/5 x 4/5 x 4/5 x 4/5 x 4/5 of the original batch.

> The second sentenxe doesn't follow the first - it's a flavor of Zeno's paradox, after 5 years, you'll be left with 4/5 x 4/5 x 4/5 x 4/5 x 4/5 of the original batch.

You made a mistake: it's not that 1/5 of the computers spontaneously break every year. It's that 1/5 of the students treat their computers roughly.

Assuming that laptops get collected over the summer and re-distributed each year, you should actually expect that 100% of each tranche of laptops would need to be replaced every 5 years.

I don't understand how that math could work. Assuming random assignment, the probability that a given computer is given to a one of those students is identical from year to year.

> I don't understand how that math could work. Assuming random assignment, the probability that a given computer is given to a one of those students is identical from year to year.

That's fair. I guess, it's more accurate to say that you'd expect a number of laptops equal to the size of the initial tranche to be destroyed after the first 5 years.

Although if I was running IT, it'd definitely keep track of the "destructive" students and issue them the oldest equipment, in which case, we'd be back to something closer to my original statement.

You're assuming that 4/5 of the laptops remained in pristine condition. I doubt that very much. You need to take account for the ordinary wear and tear compounded together with the impact of abusive 1/5 of users that do an excessive amount of damage (requiring a total overhaul.)

And anyway, if 1/5 of laptops needed major repairs and some of them got it, those go back into circulation. Are they still original laptops? (Ask my grandfather's axe...)

This assumes that 1/5 of them break every year which is probably not the case, older laptops will break more frequently.

On the other hand, considering we are talking about kids breaking laptops, this failures are much more random, a brand new laptop is not that much more likely to survive a fall than an old one.

If the older laptop has already "survived" a fall, yes, it is abosolutely more likely to break from the same fall than the new laptop.

For things which are effectively integers there is no paradox when your division results in a number less than one you have nothing or perhaps more accurately a probability of having 1 but any given instance in actuality has either 1 or zero. Also equipment failure isn't a linear thing its a curve as things reach expected lifespan. For instance a battery which is nontrivial to replace has an expected number of charge cycles until your battery is so shot you can't really use it off a charger any longer. An increasing number of mechanical hard drives fail, charger sockets start failing. Heating and cooling cycles cause progressive degradation of electronics.

You absolutely could design it to last 20 years with batteries that are easy to pop out and pop in as easy as changing a double aa but your customers won't pay a premium over a more disposable machine and indeed if your customer has a good experience over the 3-5 they actually use it for you make MORE if your hardware is designed to need replacement.

All data you have from the author's sentence is the first year, none about the following ones, then the conclusion that none last the full five years. But you assumed it's 1/5th per year, every year.

Anyway, it doesn't matter much either way, even if there's a few that survive, they will be having wear and tear to the point you wouldn't want another student to have them (or maybe as a replacement for a broken one); you wouldn't want some year 1 students to get a new ones while others get the year 4/5 leftovers, they'll resent it for sure.

Second, they'll be paid off after a few years.

Colloquial comment doesn't need to meet mathematical rigor. He's just saying that these laptops do not last.

Failure doesn't work that way.

It's not the case that there's a constant 1/5 probability of failure each year. Many failure modes are based on cumulative stress/degradation; so the probability of failure can go up over time.

Some failure modes go down over time; maybe there's some manufacturing defect, and those that have the defect fail early, while those that survive past the first year will have lower chances of failure early on.

But in this kind of environment, the cumulative stresses are much more likely than the early failures.

This was the case. There were no pristine laptops. Some kids are gentle with them, but things happen outside their control, kids play destructive pranks, or are just clumsy. Theoretically possible to make it to 5 years? Sure. Practically? No.

They’re much more robust today

I've seen some of the chromebooks at my daughter's school and they are beyond abused by the kids. Missing keys, screens cracked, you name it. My daughter's is in pristine condition, though!

Pretty soon we'll see kids making their own covers and protective cases for Chromebooks like we did back in the day with our textbooks

Was it an issue with Chromebooks specifically, or just a general consequence of heavily-used shared laptops?

Chromebooks are made out of plastic, children are not very careful, and people don't value free things they're given.

Pedagogically, it would seem the answer to that would be to have the classroom be a computer lab on the first day of school, and then make the kids work (running laps, taking quizzes on having done the reading) before they earn the laptop to take home.

Nah, that won't work either, kids forget about that very fast. You don't sound like you've got kids yourself either.

Kids aren't all or nothing. They remember, and they also forget.

The only thing that really works are repeated reminders and attentive consequences, over a sustained period of time.

Also, adults don't typically have coworkers grab their laptop and smash it because they're disliked.

But then you can't export the work of designing and implementing homework into some faceless corporation who's only real goal is to appeal to administrators, not teachers or kids, certainly not to match course material or learn.

I've seen an explosion of online homework recently and it's all confusing and either way to easy or waaayyyy too hard with very little of the partial credit and recourse that an actual person grading a paper assignment has.

Which comes from the same place that Microsoft Teams craptacularity comes from. The people buying the product aren't the ones using it. Computerized homework could auto adjust to be not too hard and not too easy, by changing the difficulty of the next problem, based on how the student did with the previous problem. But implementing that is beyond our capabilities, apparently.

Teachers were building lesson plans around everything being on the laptop, and that all students would have one available. A student couldn’t just be restricted to not taking laptops home, because that means that student either can’t do their homework, or has to do their homework afterschool, which would require parent involvement.

The sorts of kids with laptop issues were not the children with high parent involvement.

Plastic isn't necessarily a bad thing, metal tends to dent and deform while plastic has some elasticity. It depends on what plastic they use.

E.g. thinkpads usually use a composite plastic (carbon/glass fiber), which makes them lightweight, durable, and thermally insulated from your body. Chromebooks definitely use the cheap stuff though.

I have a ThinkPad Chromebook and it is very solid and durable, even though it was a bargain.

We had macbook airs at school and they were similarly destroyed because people would just carelessly chuck them around.

> Chromebooks are made out of plastic

Wait to see what happens to devices made of glass !

Jest aside, any device lasting even two or three years in a school environment is kinda of a big deal given the daily abuse it will get.

>After the first year, about 1/5 laptops needed major repair. None of them would make it to 5 years

Do you believe a Mac or Windows laptop would have been more reliable given the abuse they were subjected to?

I think a simple fix would be a psychological, not technical one. Simply, it's "their" laptop. They don't return it at the end of the year and if they keep it in good form, then they have one. If they don't; they don't.

And when they don't, what? The workhouse?

They'll get a crappier bulky version.

So like the office then? Your 12" light laptop that you use for travel breaks? No worries, here is a 17" 8 year old machine that will break your back carrying around everywhere, and cant be used on a airplane.

My work has solved this problem by making everyone have the crappy huge laptop. 7000+ employees, everyone gets to choose from a menu of one.

That approach doesn't really work with children.

Removing student access to technology is overly punitive and does not support the intended learning and development outcomes of attending school.

To ostracize a child because they damaged their laptop is psychological abuse.

We can just help them take better care of it and reinforce the reasons why and train them to do so! :-)

The reality is some people take care of their stuff others dont.

I see adults with absolute garbage looking iPhones. Some people just do not care. Others do. There is some amount of 'psychological' you can do to fix some of it. But at the end of the day you will have a mix of 'sorta broke', 'broken', 'did you ever take it out of the box'.

Then on top of that. There is a level of junk products. I have a high end laptop I absolutely baby. That thing is a piece of rubish and in a year or so I am going to gladly get rid of it. It has major defects ~2 years in. The previous 3 laptops I had were in very good condition for 5+ years each until the plastic literally started detreating. The same ODM's making that laptop are also making chromebooks. My only option to fix this is by buying used parts of sites like ebay. Or be without my primary computer for 4-8 weeks. Chromebooks margins have to be decently thin or they would not sell them that cheap. Which probably means the things are kind of junk too.

Mildly. Some classes had MacBook airs, which were a bit more durable to the sorts of abuse that would happen, but they costed 3x as much, and didn’t take 3x the punishment. I can’t imagine a solution beyond ‘give them the cheapest thing possible’ which happens to still be chromebooks.

Having participated in a one-laptop-per-student pilot program ages ago, with Fujitsu tablet convertibles that were very much plastic painted to look like brushed metal, I had problems keeping my laptop intact too - since I was constantly running between classes, sandwiching my laptop between textbooks, the case plastics didn’t last the year. But laptops were much, much heavier then.

I think an individual device not making it 5 year would be fine.

A big issue with chromebooks in particular: there's many discreet models of different sizes and builds, that all require different parts, and don't get renewed every year.

One school ordering 400 12" HP chromebooks for instance will have no guarantee to be able to order another batch 2 years later, even of an equivalent machine that could be a straight replacement.

Perhaps Dell has a more stable offering given they probably understand these problematics better ?

I've been dating a 6th grade teacher in a SV adjacent town, and hearing how she attempts to teach with these things is hard to imagine for me even though I was a computer nerds as a kid.

They have like 5 different saas programs/platforms they use. They also have video platforms. Reading, library checkout, digital media, quizzes, tests, who knows.

If I was a kid without add, I would for sure have it having to use that stuff at 11 years old.

I'm not sure who thought doing away with pen and paper and a simple book in front of you was a good idea.

I assume it was an IT/software salesperson with ability to give kickbacks.