Software obsolescence: the hardware still works perfectly

At home I have a laptop from 2014 that works perfectly. The keyboard responds, the screen is clean, the battery was replaced once for thirty euros, and the processor is more than enough for what I ask of it. Its manufacturer has considered it dead for years, its original system no longer gets security patches, and the next version refuses to install for a reason that has nothing to do with its performance.

What kills a machine today

In the past, a device wore out. A moving part gave way, a capacitor swelled, a solder joint cracked. It could be repaired, and sometimes it was even designed to be. Today, the electronics of a computer or a phone last far longer than the period during which its maker agrees to send it updates.

So the retirement is a decision, not a breakdown. A system that requires a specific security chip. A phone that no longer receives patches and becomes unsafe for banking. An app that raises its minimum version and drops older models without any obvious technical need. The hardware didn’t ask for anything, it was simply taken off the list.

What this shifts, and onto whom

A large part of a digital device’s environmental footprint is set during manufacturing, before the first boot: extraction, refining, etching, transport. In other words, the best thing you can do with an existing machine is keep it for a long time, and shortening its software life cancels most of that effort in one stroke.

The cost of that shortcut doesn’t fall on the person who decides. It falls on the buyer who replaces the device, on local authorities who run waste channels, on schools and administrations that renew entire fleets because support has ended, and on people who live near the extraction and processing sites. The one who set the end-of-support date records higher sales of replacements.

The law is starting to get involved, slowly

The European Union has introduced obligations on ecodesign, spare parts availability and repairability, and France has written planned obsolescence into its law, including software. This is real, and it isn’t nothing.

It’s also slow, and the text runs into a simple difficulty: proving intent. A publisher will always say the new version needs more memory, that the old model can’t guarantee security, that maintaining two branches is expensive. Sometimes that’s true. Who chose the threshold, and on what criteria, stays outside what can be proven.

What I do with my old laptop

It runs a light Linux distribution, it serves as my backup machine and my test bench, and it will keep getting patches as long as volunteers are willing to produce them. That’s a personal workaround, not a solution, and it takes a level of tinkering I don’t have the nerve to recommend to someone who just wants to check their email.

The message on screen says “your device is no longer supported”. Read it the other way round: the manufacturer stopped supporting the device. The device itself never gave up.