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I see companies cycling out laptops in 3 years, and I keep finding many that are still under warranty. Why is this? I've bought a couple of them and I find them to be capable machines. Some of those machines have served me for over 10 years and continue to run except for the keyboards giving way or the CPU cooling going kaput.

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Labor costs more than hardware. Employees who are waiting on the computer more than the computer waits on them is costly. Laptops have shorter service lives because they get dropped or drinks spilled on them. Outsourcing hardware repairs by buying the three year warranty is more cost effective than doing it in house.

Basically this. A Windows install is much better now at not outright dying from years of daily use, but they still frequently get a little weird over the same time period. So if you're going to refresh their Windows install, might as well just give them a new computer in the process.

> Laptops have shorter service lives because they get dropped or drinks spilled on them.

Those are certainly factors, but I've found reduced battery life is what gets users asking for a new laptop if they haven't prematurely killed it some other way.

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