when microsoft feels threatened by the recycling community being noticed, they add more technical constraints. Chromebooks are the gold standard for an intentionally non recyclable machine, neck and neck with apple.
The bullshit of chromeOS to be capable of running on the shittiest hardware but having an artificial lifetime for devices is stupid.
To google's credit, they did increase that limit to 10 years, but that was only recently.
Yes, and they’re encouraging people to throw it out. At least some users think to sell on the secondary market, but third party buyers can only get so much out of EOL Windows machines and there are only so many linux users with an interest in buying up old hardware.
I myself have a couple of used laptops, but don’t need any more hardware for a while, so it’s not like I’m able to buy up any. I fear much of it will rot in a landfill.