India has long had a, shall we say, “informal engineering” culture,
where backstreet operators put together improvised machinery of
various kinds from whatever parts are available.

Now this extends to assembling working laptops out of the parts of broken/junked ones <https://www.theverge.com/tech/639126/india-frankenstein-laptops>.
This allows Indians on low incomes (which is much of the country) an alternative to unaffordable new-built machines.

There is a downside to these operations, and that is the health risks
from exposure to toxic materials.

Seems the Indian Government is becoming aware that it can be helpful
to these homegrown industries if it passed some good right-to-repair
laws, as is happening in many Western countries.

One question that isn’t answered in the article is: what OS are these recycled/refurbished machines running? I can’t imagine that Microsoft
would offer Windows licences for them at anything resembling OEM
prices. And I don’t think the company would accept that there is such
a thing as a “secondhand” Windows licence.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)