I've got a ThinkPad T430 that came from a local shop selling off-lease laptops a few years ago, and it's been great as a dedicated Linux laptop. Even a T490 from 2019 is only CAD$300 and change off of Amazon these days, which is wild if you don't need the latest and greatest.

I used a t430 in college more than a decade ago, I've still got it but using it feels VERY antiquated.

This news has not reached the UK. I think any fix-it-yourself bargains are snapped up by professional repairers now (keeping 2nd hand prices higher).

And people don't have a clue. They're 'I bought this laptop 4 years ago for £400, so I sell for £250 now'. Meanwhile the same laptop is £280 brand new on Amazon (https://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/product/B09XY3WLLP, 2nd hand prices was on Facebook).

I suspect a major reason for this is the coming end of life of Windows 10. This older hardware is still perfectly good and usable but often doesn't support Windows 11 because of some weird decision by Microsoft.

Seems like many of these would probably be good devices to run Linux or BSD on.

By this effect probably any ecology friendliness claims MS ever made, if any, flies out of the window, right into the next trashcan.

But I need 64gb of RAM to write and run JavaScript :(