yes, and my mother-in-law's perfectly fine computer as well.

A clash of views on sustainability... sustainability of one company's business model vs sustainability of the earth.

Honestly, I think writing something like this, as a business, should be a crime.

The answer to "What can I do with my old computer?" is "Anything you like!". Because it's a perfectly-functional computer. Telling people to destroy functioning equipment… no.

No more toilet-paper at home ?

No worries: just sell your house and buy a new one with some toilet paper in the water-closet!

seriously, this shit finally pushed me to go all in on Linux.

Best decision ever.

My Surface Pro 4 is now a Linux Tablet and it is wonderful!

My Gaming PC also now runs Linux and it is … OK. No worse than Windows, but I have a very niche interest in gaming.

save money throw Microsoft in the trash

=> Linux Mint
youtu.be/n8vmXvoVjZw?si=PMuReR…

It will still run brilliantly for many more years with one of the Linux flavours.
Make sure you have all your files on external disks.
And already now start with replacing all MS Office with LibreOffice.
And change your e-mail to Thunderbird, making sure it's in a mail package with a proper provider, not Outlook, etc. In IMAP.

I'm running Ubuntu on a 13 year old laptop, originally sold with Vista (no, I never used that).

@CAWguy @oldrawgabbit I will indeed keep using my W10 Pro netbook, but will install a Dual-boot Linnux flavour and mostly use that.

BTW, had started to get my old W8.1 netbook going again, was a failed SSD and thus the old HDD back again.

💩
I always kept my computers until they crashed by themselves or I couldn't find software. I'l do it with my Win 10, too.

I'm not sure if these emails would be legal in the EU - we have the right to repair.

at the very least, there's the option to install windows 10 LTSC (which is supported until 2032 iirc) combined with these activation scripts: massgrave.dev/
microsoft is also going to continue releasing security updates for windows 10 to paid customers, not sure if the MAS script will work for that but i wouldn't be surprised if there's a way to get these without paying

i'd prefer everyone to switch to linux but i'm keeping LTSC in my toolkit if i have a need to run windows somewhere

@soop @null @izzy @CauseOfBSOD That can all be deactivated or removed. Takes a bit of effort though and some more than basic knowledge is required.

Installing Linux is a viable alternative as well, of course, but for some applications Windows unfortunately is a requirement and/or Linux alternatives don't exist.

@be4foss

I simply do not understand. How many times can consumers be shafted before they realize THE COMPANY IS A PREDITOR.

Sorry for shouting, but fer crissakes people…

While developing for Windows 2.X, we were granted a visit from Redmond, to prep us for 3.1 We were told directly this will require replacing computers.

What about home users? MS rep said fuck 'em. No, not really, he said "Microsoft owns shares in Intel, and home users are an insignificant sliver of M$ revenue.

You'll probably get a bunch of "run Linux!" replies, and that's all well and good. Just know I have a Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 that runs many of flavors of Linux beautifully. Just about *anything* can run Linux well beyond it's forced obsolescence date by the greedy corporations.

Best of luck.

They progressively make their accessibility tools less functional. They have yet to even consider putting a screen reader or high contrast into WinPE for doing clean installs. And they're willing to say "Your PC's too old, just throw it away, not our problem"

I'm a sad ritchie