Canalys estimates that 240 million PCs could go to landfills after October 2025 when Microsoft ends free support for Windows 10. Microsoft will provide paid support until October 2028 but it’s likely that upgrading will be cheaper.
When Microsoft released Windows 11, it did so with a requirement for computers to have TPM 2.0 support for added security but many pre-Windows 11 computers don’t support this so cannot upgrade to Windows 11.
With the requirement to obtain new hardware, the analyst firm Canalys has estimated that as many as 240 million PCs will be thrown away - even if they otherwise work perfectly fine. This is not a great revelation for Microsoft’s green credentials.
If your computer doesn’t support TPM 2.0, there are a few things you can do to help minimize the landfill issue. The first option is to switch to Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or some other Linux distribution.
Linux works very well out of the box on most computers and it isn’t too difficult to write the ISO image to a USB and install it on your PC, the process should take around 30 minutes. With much of our computing being done online, the lack of Windows software for Linux is not too much of an issue now.
If you absolutely need to use Windows and plan to landfill your old computer then take out anything that can be removed such as hard drives and memory (on laptops). Hard drives can be placed in external hard drive cases available on sites like Amazon, giving you a new external hard drive, and the RAM can be used with other devices to add more memory if they need it. You could also sell these parts.
If you are planning to buy a new PC, have a look at Neowin’s deals page to get big discounts on PCs and other products, this helps to keep Neowin free of charge for readers.
Source: Reuters
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