help i accidentally bought 400 chromebooks wtf do i do with them (real)

[BrainScorcher]

You've been clickbaited! HA!

 

I did buy a lot of ~400 Chromebooks, but it was absolutely intentional. These lots are available on every auction site I know of at insanely low prices (I'm talking ~$10 USD/unit base price), and I saw an opportunity. My idea originally was to fix and flip the laptops, after possibly flashing them with an up-to-date and supported OS. I even went as far as to sacrifice my dignity and post on Reddit to gather suggestions for alternative OS's with long-term support from the community. In some ways, Chromebooks are actually a great product for this kind of enterprise. They don't have hard drives that can be removed and destroyed, come with an OS*, and in addition to being steeply discounted second-hand, are physically very simple devices, making repairs fairly simple.

The project essentially had a few core goals:

1. Make the power of even basic computing accessible to more people
2. Give Chromebooks new life
3. Reduce e-waste
4. Do some cool nerd shit

It's been great to see more and more coverage of this kind of thing by LMG, and now that they've actually directly addressed the Chromebook issue on WAN Show, I figured I'd post here and gather some feedback and ideas from this incredibly creative and eco-conscious tech community. There are a few specific things that I'd love to get some others' thoughts on -

• There are obviously many options for alternative OS installations, but the main issue that I keep running into is long-term support. Projects like GalliumOS, a Linux distro specifically designed to be installed on EOL Chromebooks, are no longer supported, while Neverware's CloudReady was purchased by Google and killed (shocker) in favor of Google's own ChromeOS Flex. ChromeOS Flex is currently my frontrunner as an alternative, because it's the most likely to support Chrome hardware, preserve the Chromebook featureset and experience, and extend their life.
• Testing, fixing and flashing Chromebooks is super tedious. Because of their locked-down nature, automation is basically impossible on any level and Google's own documentation recommends using a Rubber Ducky USB to automate things like domain enrollment. That's not even broaching the complexity of flashing a new firmware and operating system. One possibility that I've considered foe the long-term is the "Uber Eats" model - crowdsourcing labor to fix, flash and test the laptops from university compsci students or high school techies, passing the cost to the end user while still undercutting new low-end laptops.
• I've considered the idea of selling refurbished laptops back to school districts or refurbishing their existing Chromebooks as a service, but this would require some kind of reputation and relationship with school districts and probably include some super duper fun government contracting gymnastics.
• For some reason it seems like the chargers for second-hand laptops disappear into thin air. It's very rare to see a lot that comes with them. Compatible chargers are available from Alibaba for as little as $4/unit, but I'd like to avoid any unnecessary new goods. A substantial number of them actually use USB-C charging, which led me to consider buying USB-C chargers for all of them and outfitting the rest with USB-C-to-barrel-jack adapters as necessary. I'm not sure if this is actually a better option. USB-C chargers are arguably more future-proof and widely compatible, but the adapter introduces more points of failure.
• Pretty much all of the laptops have considerable cosmetic damage caused by long-term exposure to grade-school children. I've considered painting them, covering them with stickers or vinyl sheets dbrand-style, or just putting them in laptop cases to hide the scratches (see the next bullet).
• I've explored the idea of not using any shipping materials, instead opting for a reliable laptop case and bag. My thinking is this - if a laptop case is sturdy enough to handle drops in daily use, it can handle shipping. Along with the bag, these will also have some real value to the end user, rather than creating more trash. I've also considered recycled shipping materials as a fallback option.

 

I know this is a lot and I hope it won't be interpreted as me asking the community to do my homework! I've already invested a fair bit of time and effort into this project and only want to find the best possible approach with the assistance of other like-minded people.

[Radium_Angel]

donate and get a tax writeoff

[Arika]

Normally this is something you would think about before spending $4000...

[LloydLynx]

If you go with a Linux distro, one of the selling points could be frustration free with no online account requirements. 

[Echothedolpin]

I would ask myself why no one else is doing this before purchasing that level of volume. If you place any value on your free time I’d advise the following: any significant investment of time (money aside) for such a low return should only be done for your own enjoyment, not for an expectation of monetary return.

 

[BrainScorcher]

1 hour ago, Echothedolpin said:

I would ask myself why no one else is doing this before purchasing that level of volume. If you place any value on your free time I’d advise the following: any significant investment of time (money aside) for such a low return should only be done for your own enjoyment, not for an expectation of monetary return.

 

That's exactly the case. This is *at best* a small source of supplementary income. It was something we considered heavily before making the purchase, but we couldn't come up with a compelling reason.

 

2 hours ago, Arika S said:

Normally this is something you would think about before spending $4000...

Related to that - we did think about it (and as a side note it was considerably more than that, the phrase "base price" is doing some heavy lifting). Please see the end of my post where I specifically said that I'm not asking people to do my homework. I just wanted to throw it out there on the off-chance that someone on the interwebs would have some interesting ideas that we hadn't considered already.

 

So far I'm pretty disappointed. I can't stress enough that I have no expectations, but I'd hoped for something a bit more thoughtful than "reported lol" and "everyone look at this dumbfuck he wasted his money lol lmao rofl"

[BrainScorcher]

13 hours ago, LloydLynx said:

If you go with a Linux distro, one of the selling points could be frustration free with no online account requirements. 

That's an interesting point. I'd also considered using an alternative to GSuite like Proton suite. Obviously there's a huge implementation cost there though.

 

22 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

donate and get a tax writeoff

I know you're goofing but there are actually organizations that do precisely this - they take donated tech equipment, redistribute it to people/places in need and you get a fun little deduction based on the tech valuation.

[Kisai]

On 5/3/2023 at 10:35 AM, BrainScorcher said:

You've been clickbaited! HA!

 

I did buy a lot of ~400 Chromebooks, but it was absolutely intentional. These lots are available on every auction site I know of at insanely low prices (I'm talking ~$10 USD/unit base price), and I saw an opportunity.

Oh I don't know about that, you just wasted $4000

 

On 5/3/2023 at 10:35 AM, BrainScorcher said:

 

My idea originally was to fix and flip the laptops, after possibly flashing them with an up-to-date and supported OS.

 

And then what? You bought them for $10, you think you gonna sell them for $100? Not when people are still selling them for $10.

 

On 5/3/2023 at 10:35 AM, BrainScorcher said:

 

I even went as far as to sacrifice my dignity and post on Reddit to gather suggestions for alternative OS's with long-term support from the community. In some ways, Chromebooks are actually a great product for this kind of enterprise. They don't have hard drives that can be removed and destroyed, come with an OS*, and in addition to being steeply discounted second-hand, are physically very simple devices, making repairs fairly simple.

The project essentially had a few core goals:

1. Make the power of even basic computing accessible to more people
2. Give Chromebooks new life
3. Reduce e-waste
4. Do some cool nerd shit

 

Your best option would be to try and install an OS on it that isn't married to Google, but you're pretty much limited to some Linux OS distros that are bare-bones, and since there is a market of 0 people who want such a thing... *shrug*

 

Please understand that the chromebooks were always a stupid idea, and even acquiring 32 of these, does not give you the collective power of a single 16-core high end system. You are at best stuck with a bunch of e-waste that nobody wants, and at worst, you'll be downloading the disposal costs to someone else. You may actually have to pay people to take them from you.

 

 

On 5/3/2023 at 10:35 AM, BrainScorcher said:

 

• I've considered the idea of selling refurbished laptops back to school districts or refurbishing their existing Chromebooks as a service, but this would require some kind of reputation and relationship with school districts and probably include some super duper fun government contracting gymnastics.

Yeah, that ain't happening. 

 

 

On 5/3/2023 at 10:35 AM, BrainScorcher said:

• For some reason it seems like the chargers for second-hand laptops disappear into thin air. It's very rare to see a lot that comes with them. Compatible chargers are available from Alibaba for as little as $4/unit, but I'd like to avoid any unnecessary new goods. A substantial number of them actually use USB-C charging, which led me to consider buying USB-C chargers for all of them and outfitting the rest with USB-C-to-barrel-jack adapters as necessary. I'm not sure if this is actually a better option. USB-C chargers are arguably more future-proof and widely compatible, but the adapter introduces more points of failure.

Again, that's a consequence of how you bought them. Even if you bought 100 Precision 7000 laptops from a business, you won't their 240w power bricks which Dell also uses for the docking stations. The power bricks will outlive the laptops by 3:1. Many businesses that have disposed of two or more generations of computers but stuck with the same brand, have piles and piles of docking stations and power bricks that they kept because they didn't want to spend money on buying any new ones.

 

On 5/3/2023 at 10:35 AM, BrainScorcher said:

• Pretty much all of the laptops have considerable cosmetic damage caused by long-term exposure to grade-school children. I've considered painting them, covering them with stickers or vinyl sheets dbrand-style, or just putting them in laptop cases to hide the scratches (see the next bullet).

You could probably create a "Skin" for them, but again, you're basically sinking money into something nobody wants.

 

On 5/3/2023 at 10:35 AM, BrainScorcher said:

• I've explored the idea of not using any shipping materials, instead opting for a reliable laptop case and bag. My thinking is this - if a laptop case is sturdy enough to handle drops in daily use, it can handle shipping. Along with the bag, these will also have some real value to the end user, rather than creating more trash. I've also considered recycled shipping materials as a fallback option.

Now you have two things to dispose of.

 

 

On 5/3/2023 at 10:35 AM, BrainScorcher said:

I know this is a lot and I hope it won't be interpreted as me asking the community to do my homework! I've already invested a fair bit of time and effort into this project and only want to find the best possible approach with the assistance of other like-minded people.

 

So, the most optimist solution here is you take the laptops somewhere where people are under-served (eg rural communities) they would more likely be useful if you could ship them to like Africa but, then it's just more e-waste for them to deal with.

 

Another option, which is expensive and likely not worth it, is taking them to communities (eg native reservations/communities) and just have them as a stockpile of laptops for their community that might otherwise consider a luxury. You certainly aren't going to get your money back on them.

 

The least optimistic scenario is you spend money replacing the laptops power bricks, add skins and a new laptop bag, and someone sees you for a fool and buys them only to flip the chargers and bags on ebay and sending the rest to be shredded/recycled.

 

Like there is another scenario you could consider, is that of a workshop where you invite the community to learn how to "Repair" an old laptop, and they can keep the one they fix.

 

Like, kids will be kids, and will likely break or destroy a laptop if they know it doesn't have a value and they can just get another one for free from the school. So what you want is people to learn when something is repairable and when something should just be recycled.

 

[Radium_Angel]

6 hours ago, BrainScorcher said:

I know you're goofing but there are actually organizations that do precisely this - they take donated tech equipment, redistribute it to people/places in need and you get a fun little deduction based on the tech valuation.

I was semi-serious insofar as that was the only thing I could think of that made any sense time-wise. 

[WindmillWarrior420]

Honestly, those chromebooks are kind of the same story like 1st gen I7's at this point.

Sure, it will work fine for simple browsing and such, i bet it will play spotify like a dream, you might even play modern lighter games. but no one is going to throw big bucks at this anymore.

Support is running out and soon compatibility will be (or already is) an issue.

 

Honestly i'd go for chrome OS or something like that because no non-techie is even gonna touch linux, and windows will be quite heavy.

 

 

[BrainScorcher]

12 hours ago, Kisai said:

And then what? You bought them for $10, you think you gonna sell them for $100? Not when people are still selling them for $10.

Do you.... know how buying in bulk works? Your profile says you work in IT, you should know the drill. Even putting that aside, I think it's pretty clear that I'm looking to add value here.

 

12 hours ago, Kisai said:

Yeah, that ain't happening. 

12 hours ago, Kisai said:

Now you have two things to dispose of.

Super productive responses thanks dog

12 hours ago, Kisai said:

Again, that's a consequence of how you bought them. Even if you bought 100 Precision 7000 laptops from a business, you won't their 240w power bricks which Dell also uses for the docking stations. The power bricks will outlive the laptops by 3:1. Many businesses that have disposed of two or more generations of computers but stuck with the same brand, have piles and piles of docking stations and power bricks that they kept because they didn't want to spend money on buying any new ones.

Would their new devices not come with chargers? Would newer devices not have higher power requirements? Is it possible, as an enterprise, to specifically get devices in bulk without chargers included because the previous generation ones still fit the bill after several years?

12 hours ago, Kisai said:

So, the most optimist solution here is you take the laptops somewhere where people are under-served (eg rural communities) they would more likely be useful if you could ship them to like Africa but, then it's just more e-waste for them to deal with.

This is a super underhanded way of expressing a half-decent idea. There are plenty of underserved places outside of Africa, even within the US. You seem to be pretty certain that there's absolutely 0 use for these devices at all and absolutely no one on earth wants them in any form. I'd love to know more about that and explore what I can do to meet the demand that does exist, but I'm guessing you made that shit up and just wanted to be a dick on the internet.

 

Overall, 10/10, least productive input so far. Seek therapy.

 

12 hours ago, Kisai said:

Like there is another scenario you could consider, is that of a workshop where you invite the community to learn how to "Repair" an old laptop, and they can keep the one they fix.

 

Like, kids will be kids, and will likely break or destroy a laptop if they know it doesn't have a value and they can just get another one for free from the school. So what you want is people to learn when something is repairable and when something should just be recycled.

This is a great idea! I wish it wasn't overshadowed by the douchiness of the rest of your reply, but whether you meant to or not, you've actually contributed something pretty valuable. Thank you, I'll definitely keep it in mind.

[BrainScorcher]

4 hours ago, WindmillWarrior420 said:

Honestly, those chromebooks are kind of the same story like 1st gen I7's at this point.

Sure, it will work fine for simple browsing and such, i bet it will play spotify like a dream, you might even play modern lighter games. but no one is going to throw big bucks at this anymore.

Support is running out and soon compatibility will be (or already is) an issue.

 

Honestly i'd go for chrome OS or something like that because no non-techie is even gonna touch linux, and windows will be quite heavy.

 

 

This is essentially my idea - school kids or general users don't need it for much more than what you outlined. Gaming might be pushing it imo, but that's sort of an aside. I actually installed Linux and played Garry's Mod on my Chromebook back in the day, which maxed out at 30fps on all low at 1080p. I have zero expectations of anyone throwing big bucks at this of course. As far as Linux goes, I'm specifically seeking something built for stability, where the end-user wouldn't have to go anywhere near a terminal or even have any idea that they're on Linux. For this reason I'm pretty much limited to mainstream options for distros, or something with major for-profit support (The Windows of Linux distros, in a sense). See the Reddit post I linked if you're interested in the options I've considered.

[rcmaehl]

16 hours ago, BrainScorcher said:

 I just wanted to throw it out there on the off-chance that someone on the interwebs would have some interesting ideas that we hadn't considered already.

 

 

Install a root level RAT on the devices and leave them in public places to be taken home by less than savory people. Once on their LAN, pivot to other devices using appropriate methods and exfiltrate their saved sessions, passwords, and personal documents. Install persistence on their shitty IoT devices. Leave a calling card on the desktop of pivoted laptops and desktops. Become known as the Chromebook bandit, forever scaring people from stealing a lost chromebook again, lest they become a victim of ID and monetary theft. 

 

[DANK_AS_gay]

4 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

Install a root level RAT on the devices and leave them in public places to be taken home by less than savory people. Once on their LAN, pivot to other devices using appropriate methods and exfiltrate their saved sessions, passwords, and personal documents. Install persistence on their shitty IoT devices. Leave a calling card on the desktop of pivoted laptops and desktops. Become known as the Chromebook bandit, forever scaring people from stealing a lost chromebook again, lest they become a victim of ID and monetary theft. 

 

People dumb enough to steal a chromebook wouldn't have the brain cells left to connect stealing a chromebook to identity loss. 0/10 idea. Not productive. Seek therapy.

[rcmaehl]

1 minute ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

People dumb enough to steal a chromebook wouldn't have the brain cells left to connect stealing a chromebook to identity loss. 0/10 idea. Not productive. Seek therapy.

Specifically, why I added "Leave a calling card on the desktop of pivoted laptops and desktops."

This is 200% productive and "adds value" to the devices with a high chance of ROI.

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, BrainScorcher said:

Do you.... know how buying in bulk works? Your profile says you work in IT, you should know the drill. Even putting that aside, I think it's pretty clear that I'm looking to add value here.

 

 

Because I've literately seen laptops wheeled out of the office in literal garbage bins and handled like they were garbage when they were intended to be recycled. Laptops stacked 8' tall from the floor, still functional engineering stuff. Just 3+ years old. Like it's very likely if you picked up a large quantity of laptops, cheap, they are going to treated like that and not with the care that there is value to add to them. That's why the overall tone of the post was negative. You may mean well, but middle-man who picked it up from the school or business that used them, is disposing of devices they got for free. It absolutely kills me to see things handled like that, knowing full well that most of that stuff was still better than the stuff schools had, so I could only imagine the school stuff being treated worse.

 

BTW, check with the seller to see if maybe the chargers were sold as a separate lot. While it's likely the school or business they came from kept all of them if they were still using chromebooks, they may have also just dumped them as one separate lot because they were just all tangled and they didn't want to bother.

 

Either way, don't buy new chargers, if you can't find a pallet of chargers somewhere from the same seller, it's likely someone else may still have them. 

 

6 hours ago, BrainScorcher said:

This is a super underhanded way of expressing a half-decent idea. There are plenty of underserved places outside of Africa, even within the US. You seem to be pretty certain that there's absolutely 0 use for these devices at all and absolutely no one on earth wants them in any form. I'd love to know more about that and explore what I can do to meet the demand that does exist, but I'm guessing you made that shit up and just wanted to be a dick on the internet.

 

There are unserved communities all over the place, but you would have to actually go looking for them, because there is a fairly wide gap between "community who is underserved by government resources" and "community that is underserved by choice/inertia". Shipping laptops anywhere is going to be expensive, so you don't want to just be driving town to town to find them. You'll either have to pick a place that isn't an extortionate cost to transport them to and work from there, or as with the below response, have them come to you. I'd suggest finding some place near a transit hub in all honesty so people can just take the bus/train.

 

6 hours ago, BrainScorcher said:

This is a great idea! I wish it wasn't overshadowed by the douchiness of the rest of your reply, but whether you meant to or not, you've actually contributed something pretty valuable. Thank you, I'll definitely keep it in mind.

Here's an example: https://www.freegeekvancouver.org/community.html or https://www.rebootcanada.ca/

 

Something along this line, where people can come in, help fix some stuff and take one home.

 

When stuff is still viable, you want something like this. 

 

Again, the tone before was meant as a "this is not a good idea without a plan first", if you already bought them without a plan, you might end up having to pay storage costs or shipping costs to get them somewhere, which might make them have a negative value, and if you can't find a way to use them, now you have disposal costs.  Like a general rule of picking cheap computer stuff, is that it's either going to be so old that it's going to have no resale value or it's being sold because of storage space reasons. (which itself entails maintenance and security.)

 

When a company goes bankrupt you often see these lots of computers as well, and the company doing the liquidation is just told to get rid of them at any price. But those auctions aren't typical or common. the flippable stuff tends to come from these bankruptcy auctions, because they are sold as-is, and you have to pick it up on a set day.

 

At any rate I hope you do find something positive you can do with the laptops.