I hear a lot of (valid, to be sure) concerns about planned obsolescence and how things are being made just to be thrown away and replaced. There's also a counter argument that some new technologies are so much more efficient and effective that it's actually wasteful to continue using older models after a certain point. It's a tricky thing to get right, to be sure.
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Depends on what you are using it for I suppose. But if I have a 8 year old laptop and it does what I need it to do, I don't believe it is more "efficient" to toss it and buy a new one. It certainly isn't more efficient for my finances. I guess all I can do as a consumer is vote with my wallet. The reason the last phone I bought is a Note 4 instead of a Note 5 (the newest available then) or iPhone is because it is easy to replace the battery and expand the storage. The reason I won't buy a Macbook Pro whenever I get my next laptop is because there is virtually 0 maintenance you can do on them. One thing I've always liked about Dell is the fact that service manuals and parts are readily available for their laptops and they are relatively easy to work on (unless that has changed in the last year or two). It seems to me that Apple has adopted what bargain basement PC laptops have been doing for a while now with they way they solder in the RAM and everything else.
I realize that doing this makes them cheaper to produce and it makes them able to be slightly lighter and thinner but I don't care about those extra few ounces and 1/8th of an inch as much as I care about being able to expand the RAM at a later date or fix something when it breaks.