Certainly not a premium one.

I bought a Chromebook back in 2014 (so, 8 years ago). As I bought in early, by the time Google added the ability to run Android apps to the OS, my hardware was too old and they wouldn’t support it. But, then, they stopped updating the OS.

I’m actually writing this post on it and it works just fine… most of the time. It’s a little sluggish, but usable. Except, when it isn’t. And that’s because when Google stop providing updates, they really do. And that includes the Chrome browser.

Chrome is currently on v104, but my Chromebook is very much stuck on v76. As a result, I regularly get issues with websites that, for good reason, don’t support older browser versions.

And, here’s the thing, on any other OS this wouldn’t be an issue. I have a 2012 MacBook Pro. Apple doesn’t support the latest MacOS on it but, never-the-less, I can run the latest version of Chrome on it. Indeed, on any other OS, I could resolve this by running an alternative browser, which isn’t an option here.

Have they stopped supporting the browser update because of the age of the hardware? Maybe it really can’t support anything further. I think not – Google generally stops supporting updates on products after a set period of time, whether the hardware can support it or not.

I’ll get good money that if I installed Linux on this machine, I could run the newest Chrome. Instead I’m left with something being left behind, quickly. Thank God it was only a cheap model – I feel you’d have to be a mug to buy a premium Chromebook with such limited long-term prospects for it.