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Comment by vondur | Hacker News Reader

This is a huge e-waste issue. I work as a Sysadmin in a large public university, and I've been spending the last year or so removing and replacing large amounts of computers that can no longer run a supported version of Windows. I just recently sent around 50 computers to a company that supposedly donates/resales them, but I'm going to guess most will end up as E-waste prematurely. Yes, we can purchase an extended support contract to continue using Windows 10, but unless it's for specific equipment that has a PC connected to it we've been told to get rid of them.

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Why is this e-waste when compared to old Mac laptops - many of which are in perfect working order, save Apple arbitrarily stopping OS updates because they were too lazy to maintain or update device drivers. Somehow MS requiring TPM2 for Windows 11 was the end of humanity as we know it, but a Mac with a T2 chip is heralded as progress.

If anything many of these PCs will enjoy a second life off eBay in someone's home-lab running Linux. One of the most popular "servers" in the home-lab community are those little Lenovo Thinkstations you see in hospitals.

Edit: if you're a sysadmin at a university, aren't you replacing machines every 3-5 years anyway?

Who is denying that Apple is responsible for e-waste?

It's just not a criticism I see put forth as often or as loudly. In this case, those old Windows PCs have a much better chance at a second life than a purpose-built Mac, so the criticism is largely unjustified.

Probably because macs are a small part of the market

If you compare the sheer volume of the devices in question you will see it's very justified.

I feel like a used Mac laptop has a higher chance of being resold than anything else, provided it's at least new enough to get security updates. The oldest macOS that got a recent patch was Monterey, which supports MBPs as old as 2015 (which happens to be what I have).

Apple's "3 year" macOS security update policy https://tinyapps.org/blog/macos-3year.html

> Why is this e-waste when compared to old Mac laptops

It might surprise you to learn that 90% of computers sold are not-Macs: https://canalys.com/newsroom/worldwide-pc-shipments-q1-2025#...

Yes, but they make up a much larger percent of computers stolen.

I've been buying them off ebay, $80 for a pretty good PC. It's better in many ways than a Raspberry Pi.

My Dad got an old Mac in an auction. As a non-apple person, I just assumed I'd be able to upgrade the OS, however discovered it's unsupported. I ended up installing Debian on it.

It used to be that you could install Windows on those macs and get a fully supported and updated OS. Not anymore

TPM is not really the problem BTW. You can enable fTPM or install a $20 TPM. The problem is that Windows 11 doesn't (officially) support older CPUs because of VBS.

I guess the market share, especially for use cases that extends beyond displays, is significantly smaller for Macs than for PCs. So Macs can demand whatever and it will be materially less significant.

We do replace faculty computers every 4 years if possible. However, we tend to pass the older computers down to other areas if they are still usable, which we are not able to do. We do have a lot of Mac's in the College. I'm actually really pissed at Apple for no longer allowing to use iMac's as external displays. We have a lot of 27" iMac's that wont be usable in the near future once Apple stops supporting Intel based computers. I'd love to be able to use the iMac's as external displays since they are great 5K monitors.

Where I live, the main university has a "University Surplus" store where things like that go to be sold dirt cheap to tech-savvy folks who already know it's not garbage yet. $50 and a Linux install disc and you've generally got a fully working still fairly modern(ish) machine (modern enough to easily support some basic upgrades [GPU, RAM, HD, etc] if necessary for your intended purpose) all ready to rock-and-roll. Win/win for everyone involved. The University gets a bit of money out of it, anyone who wants or needs a cheap machine gets one, and the landfill gets to avoid some unnecessary e-waste.

I buy old laptops and corporate desktops off eBay (and FreeGeek) constantly. I really hope people sell them instead of recycling them. They're not worthless, especially to people like me with zero interest in Windows.

I only buy old refurbished DELL/ LENOVO/... computers because of the numerous ports and they are better build than the recent one at the same price (I'm often using them outdoors in rain, cold, or sandy places, something that would wear off any cheap new laptop way too fast). Hopefully sellers online won't stop selling them if they can't get new W10 OEM licenses, but most people want windows, not Linux.

The only reason most of these computers cannot run W11 is the graphic card, nothing more, they can have 16+ gigs of RAM, can be upgraded with internal 5G wifi cards for cheap, and yes, I still use ExpressCard PCMCIA extensions as well (to add USB ports for instance), or even docking stations!

edit: they are easier to repair as well or find parts for because the design goal wasn't to be ultra-thin or ultra-light.

Windows 10 IoT LTSC is supported till 2032.

You should be retiring your oldest 20% every year anyway to keep things on a 5 year cycle. You're absolutely killing your helpdesk team if you keep computers until they die.

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