I would also like to mention the common use of Linux on recycled or older computer hardware. There is a mountain of hardware sitting in warehouses or going into landfill. Many of these machines are usable with Linux. If restrictive boot-loaders become common on consumer grade hardware, that option is closed off.
Hello bad_user. Yup your comment is probably spot on for the £300 15.4 inch 'household laptop' that is very popular in the UK for consumer purchase.
I suspect as pad devices and mobile phones take over the real mobile use cases, laptops will get a bit more expensive as the market shrinks.
There is an opportunity to build them a bit better and to make them a bit more recyclable/upgradeable. Each product manufacturer has to make small decisions like this across all areas if we are to achieve sustainable consumption.
The tricky bit is encouraging manufacturers to make those decisions.
A lot of the second-hand computers go to charities, and end up in schools of developing countries, etc. These are often places that wouldn't be able to afford computers otherwise.
On long term, the people who learn computing this way may be a market for new computers, and that makes it good for computer manufacturers.
Besides that, computers in a landfill is a terrible idea, ecology-wise.
Do you have any data to back this up? I've been tasked with getting rid of old computers before (at a large company) and it was a very painful process. Schools wouldn't take them. I can't even imagine trying to send them to another country! We ended up actually paying someone to haul many of them away.
