Perhaps, the only reason your Chromebook can’t be bothered with in terms of performance and reliability is that it’s well beyond its lifespan. You might also check your Chromebook under the “Auto Update Policy” section to check when its updates expire and the device officially loses support from Google. If your Chrome OS is ahead of that date, the time is night for another purchase.
Computers are hardware-dependent devices. As time passes, the Internet grows bigger and more powerful, and outdated models might not be capable enough to keep running optimally. This is why if nothing works—not even a Powerwash—it’s best that you treat yourself to a new Chromebook.
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How many years do Chromebooks last?
The answer depends on the device you own, but in general, we can use Chromebooks for years with no issues. While it may not be possible to continue using your current Chromebook after several years, you should be able to get at least two or three years out of it before needing to replace it.
There are a few things that determine how long your Chromebook will last before breaking down or becoming obsolete:
Turn Off Extensions to Speed Up Chromebook
If you’ve been using a Chromebook for a while you likely have installed at least a few extensions. If you are like me, you probably have dozens installed. Extensions are helpful or fun apps that help you do or view something in Chrome. There are productivity extensions, weather extensions, note-taking extensions, and tons of others. You can see and manage your extensions at chrome://extensions/. I cover my favorite note-taking app in my Teacher’s Guide to Getting Organized with Google Keep post.
While extensions are helpful in certain circumstances, it’s unlikely you need them all running at the same time. Each one you have running is using at least a little bit of your memory and some are using a lot of it. You should turn off any extension you don’t need. This can be a pain, but one of my favorite free extensions makes it easy. It’s called Extensity and it allows you to quickly turn individual extensions on and off. You can learn more about it in this quick video I made which shows you how it works.
Cut down the extensions
In most cases of Chromebooks slowing down, too many extensions become the culprit. Extensions can add more weight to the memory, causing the browser and computer to slug. For this reason, it is essential to cut down the extensions as much as you can. But if you want them to stay, be sure to manage them with the extension manager. These steps will help you disable the extensions.
Google Drive Uses RAM When in Offline Mode
This advice is for you if you observed that “Background Page: Google Drive” is using a lot of RAM. Your Chromebook is probably sluggish because you have a lot of documents on your Google Drive. Google is syncing your papers for offline use, which explains why. A user with a small number of Drive documents wouldn’t be as aware of this.
Google Docs will operate slowly if your computer has insufficient RAM or a single core processor.