Help me ID risks I'm not thinking of.

May 17, 2019 10:49 AM

How long post-support should I use my Chromebook?

My beloved Toshiba Chromebook 2 is going to be out of support as of June next year. I obviously have some time to figure out what my next purchase will be (I'm sticking with Chromebook, so it'll just be a matter of finding the one I want), but I really, really love my current machine and don't want to part with it a second before I have to. It's running just fine for my needs, it's in good physical shape, and it seems silly to get rid of it before it stops working or starts physically degrading/falling apart.

Other than the inherent risk of not getting regular security patches, what other downsides or risks are there to using an out-of-support Chromebook? I assume that Chrome itself will eveentually stop being compatible with whatever my final delivered version of Chrome OS ends up being, but I also assume that will be a while after my final OS update - am I wrong in thinking that?

What else am I missing?

posted by pdb to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

As long as you keep good backups — ideally one that's a daily/continuous cloud backup and one that's at least weekly on an external hard drive kept in a safe location — there's no reason to rush to replace. As long as you have the backups you're fine even if it dies on you without hope of resuscitation.
posted by beagle at 12:05 PM on May 17, 2019

One option to limit the security risks of using a chromebook after the end of its support is to use crouton . I think you should still be able to receive linux updates for the chroot that you setup.
posted by mundo at 4:36 PM on May 18, 2019