There is a quiet pile of perfectly good computers building up around New Zealand. Laptops that boot in seconds, desktops that have never missed a day, machines that were expensive when they were bought and still do everything their owner needs. Windows 10 end of support has caught them all out, and their only crime is that Microsoft has decided they cannot run Windows 11. If you have been told your device is now unsupported and you should buy a new one, it is worth pausing before you do.
What Windows 10 end of support actually means
Windows 10 stopped receiving mainstream support in October 2025. Microsoft offered home users a stopgap called Extended Security Updates, which kept critical patches flowing for another year, but that programme finishes on 13 October 2026. After that date, a Windows 10 machine no longer receives security fixes at all.
That is the part that matters. The computer will keep switching on and the software will keep opening. What stops is the steady stream of patches that close newly discovered holes. Every month that passes after October adds another set of known vulnerabilities that will never be fixed on that device. For a machine used to check email, do internet banking, or hold customer records, that is a real and growing risk rather than a theoretical one.
Why so many machines cannot upgrade
The frustrating bit is that most of these computers are not slow or worn out. They fail Windows 11’s requirements on a technicality.
Windows 11 requires a security chip called a TPM 2.0, and it requires a processor from Microsoft’s approved list, which broadly starts at Intel’s 8th generation and AMD’s Ryzen 2000 series. A machine built a year or two before that cutoff might have plenty of memory, a healthy solid-state drive and years of life left in it, and still be refused the upgrade. There is no amount of tidying up or adding memory that fixes it. The hardware simply is not on the list.
The result is that a lot of businesses and households are being pushed into replacing equipment that is working fine, purely to stay patched. In some cases that is unavoidable. In many cases it is not.
The landfill problem nobody budgeted for
New Zealand already has a poor record on e-waste. Estimates put the country’s electronic waste at somewhere around 100,000 tonnes a year, and the overwhelming majority of it goes to landfill rather than being recovered. We have no national e-waste law and no mandatory producer responsibility scheme, so what happens to an old computer largely comes down to what its owner decides to do with it.
A forced hardware refresh across a whole country’s worth of Windows 10 machines pushes a lot of metal, plastic and lithium into that stream at once. It is also money leaving small businesses that could have been spent elsewhere. On the West Coast, where the nearest big-box retailer is not exactly around the corner and freight adds to every purchase, replacing three or four office machines at once is a genuine hit.
Linux Mint: a second life for a good machine
This is where an alternative operating system comes in. Linux Mint is a free, open-source operating system built to be familiar to Windows users. It has a taskbar in the bottom left, a start menu, a file browser, and a software manager that works a bit like an app store. Most people who have used Windows can find their way around it within an afternoon.
A few things make it a sensible fit for older hardware:
- It runs happily on modest specifications. Machines that struggle under a modern Windows install often feel noticeably quicker under Mint.
- There is no TPM requirement and no approved processor list. If the machine works, Mint will almost certainly install on it.
- Support is long. The current long-term release is maintained until 2029, with security updates throughout, and it costs nothing.
- The everyday software is already there. A web browser, an office suite that opens Word and Excel files, email, video calls, photo tools and PDF readers all come as standard or install in a couple of clicks.
For a machine whose job is web-based work, email, documents and browsing, which describes an enormous number of business and home computers, that is often the whole requirement met.
Be honest about where it does not fit
Linux Mint is not a drop-in replacement for every situation, and anyone telling you otherwise is overselling it.
If your business depends on a Windows-only application, such as certain accounting or point-of-sale packages, specialist industry software, or the full Adobe suite, Mint is the wrong answer. Some printers and scanners, particularly older multifunction units, have patchy driver support. Anyone deeply invested in the desktop Microsoft 365 applications will need to move to the browser versions, which work well but are not identical. And there is a learning curve, even if it is a gentler one than people expect.
The right approach is to look at each machine and what it is actually used for, rather than making one decision for everything you own. A reception PC and the machine running your payroll may well deserve different answers.
Work out what you have before you spend
Before you replace anything, it is worth taking stock. Which machines genuinely cannot run Windows 11, and which just need the TPM switched on in the firmware, because that catches people out more often than you would think. What does each machine actually do all day? Which ones hold data that would matter if they were compromised? Where would a rebuild onto Mint be straightforward, and where would it cause more problems than it solves?
That assessment usually takes a lot less time than people fear, and it frequently shows that only one or two devices really need replacing. The rest can either be moved to a supported free operating system, repurposed for a lower-risk job, or passed on to someone who can use them.
And if a machine really has reached the end of its life in your business, that does not have to mean the end of its life altogether. Wiping a device, installing Linux Mint and passing it on can give it years of useful service somewhere else. Community groups, sports clubs, marae, schools and charitable organisations are very often running on whatever hardware someone has handed them, and a clean, patched machine with a browser and an office suite on it is genuinely useful to them. It keeps another computer out of landfill and puts it somewhere it will do some good close to home. The one thing to be careful about is the data: make sure the drive is properly wiped rather than just having the files deleted before the machine leaves your hands.
If you would like a hand working through what you have, what is genuinely at risk and what your options are, get in touch. It is the kind of practical question we deal with regularly as part of our IT services, and it is always cheaper to ask before the purchase order goes in than after.