It’s not about individuals, it’s about businesses. Many companies will not bother to sell any of these. The HDDs and SSDs will go into a chipper (for security reasons) and the rest will go into the dumpster. Dealing with old machines like this isn’t worth the salary to pay an employee to sell them, nor is it worth the headache to make sure that employee is selling them in a compliant way.
Most go to a tech recycler. They pay their client a pittance for the old equipment, then they refurbish/resell it on places like eBay. Yes, the SSD is often destroyed, and usually the mounting bracket with it. But the rest is fully functional and readily available.
If you want to see this firsthand, just go to eBay and search for “Thinkpad T490”. These are about 5 years old now, and at the end of the corporate lifecycle. They were also a very popular corporate device, and very rare for individual consumers. You will see an absolute ton of these, and mostly from recyclers. But they originally came from places like Coca-Cola and Chase.
I’m self employed and bought a T480 last year for work. Still runs like a dream with pop os, only downside is that it started complaining about the third party battery I bought.
It’s not about individuals, it’s about businesses. Many companies will not bother to sell any of these. The HDDs and SSDs will go into a chipper (for security reasons) and the rest will go into the dumpster. Dealing with old machines like this isn’t worth the salary to pay an employee to sell them, nor is it worth the headache to make sure that employee is selling them in a compliant way.
Most go to a tech recycler. They pay their client a pittance for the old equipment, then they refurbish/resell it on places like eBay. Yes, the SSD is often destroyed, and usually the mounting bracket with it. But the rest is fully functional and readily available.
If you want to see this firsthand, just go to eBay and search for “Thinkpad T490”. These are about 5 years old now, and at the end of the corporate lifecycle. They were also a very popular corporate device, and very rare for individual consumers. You will see an absolute ton of these, and mostly from recyclers. But they originally came from places like Coca-Cola and Chase.
I’m self employed and bought a T480 last year for work. Still runs like a dream with pop os, only downside is that it started complaining about the third party battery I bought.
That is already happening with top shelf Hardware, see a youtuber like Salem tech