Until it phones you at 3 a.m. drunk crying about it's boyfriend/girlfriend/significant other not talking any more ... it's not sentient.

As a tech helper at my local library, I often dealt with computers that had not been run for 6 months at a time. I always advise people "Plug it in, connect to the internet and leave it on overnight, watch it when it first starts and if it asks "Do you want to install this update?" click Yes. Check it in the morning ... and possibly do it all again the next night. Once it is done, it should run OK. If it bogs down again: rinse & repeat!

I'm typing this on a desktop running Xubuntu ...

Back in the pre-Covid19 era, I was one of two people who taught a basic "Windows" course at our local library. Most of the students were older folk like ourselves (over 60s) who had little or no prior use of computers.

One of the things we had to teach was how to save/find files. One student, while being shown how to create something in a program and then save it, successfully saved it into "the Cloud" without realising where that was.

So, we had to modify our teaching program to distinguish between files saved on your computer and saved somewhere "on the internet". We also show the basic half dozen folders in the normal file system, for saving files.

As others have commented, I don't think we've yet escaped the need to know where our files are. Smartphone using kids are going to have to learn eventually if they're going into any sort of technical field, STEM or otherwise.

I'm sure I remember a documentary report on the feverish investment in "ghost" property in China, at least 3 or 4 years ago. This company or another like it were selling off the plan, and eventually building lots and lots of apartment buildings, and the general view of people buying them was that they were a good investment ... even though the majority were never occupied.
There would be one apartment fitted out for display within a building, all the empty unfinished apartments would be sold off ... and the company would move onto the construction of another instead of finishing the apartments in the last building. Madness by any other name.
Sorry if I'm simply repeating what is already known about this collapse, but it's been heading this way for a long, long time.

I spent a lot of time in 2019 installing Linux (mostly Xubuntu) alongside Win7, on hardware that was still running fine, for owners who had been scared of the messaging about end of support, but did not have the money to buy a new machine.

It will be trivial to do the same on Win 10 machines, even if I have to set the BIOS to allow Legacy booting.

Not only but also, the hardware requirements for Linux distros do not escalate anywhere near as quickly. I am running the latest Xubuntu LTS version on a Dell desktop that is over a decade old.

I will have to "drink the Koolaid" and install Win11 at some stage, because in pre-pandemic days I taught a community training course ... but there's plenty of time.
Maybe Win 12?

I recently started up the laptop I use occasionally, and it announced I could upgrade to version 21H1. I'd only recently let it install 20H2, so I was wondering how much had changed: seems not much, since it basically sat there installing stuff for 10 minutes, restarted and ... done! Took me about a week to accept it really was that easy, and now I'm wondering if they didn't try all that hard because "there's a new version coming out". But I suspect a whole lot of "updates" get installed in the background these days. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or bad news. In case you're wondering, I'm typing this on an old desktop running Xubuntu. I only use the aforementioned laptop for teaching those unable to escape Win10.

I installed LInux for a number of people who had perfectly functional Windows 7 laptops. I set up a dual-boot, with the warning that if they wanted to use Win7 make sure their internet is disconnected. The Linux installed boots by default if they don't catch it at startup. I haven't heard from any of them.

So, that would be "Broken Law" ... sounds about right!

You don't have to disconnect from any network, to create a Local account instead of a MSofty one. But the local account option is an obscure small link in the bottom left of screen, and you do have to fight your way through 3 or 4 attempts to sell you on the idea of "... but you NEED a Microsoft account".

Marketeers gonna Market! Anything you can say that makes the product sound good ... is worth the risk of being called out later on for lying in your teeth.
Vehicle manufacturers, Cheese makers, Beer makers, Politicians ... doesn't matter who's marketing/advertising you examine, there will be lies in the content.
Hey, look over there, shiny thing!

Ditto! I miss Gnome 2, but Gnome 3 and/or Unity on Ubuntu seemed weird no matter how hard I tried to use them.

As I understand it, if you hold down the shift key when doing a shutdown, it does not go into the "hibernate" state. This can be useful if a driver is corrupted during normal use e.g. if sound suddenly stops working in headphones. After such a shift+shutdown, all new copies of drivers are loaded from storage, instead of the wonky driver that would have been in the "saved state" created by a normal shutdown.

You do need to be cautious though in advising people to do so, because if you hold the shift key down during a restart, you enter the "trouble-shooting and/or recovery" mode. People really need to pay attention to what menu option they click on!

I seem to remember that one unanticipated problem occurred on the last day of 2000. A Norwegian train stopped in its tracks at midnight of 31st December 2000 because of a Y2K bug in controlling software.

Having said that, the government department I worked in at the time of Year 2000 had made it's preparations in the 2 or 3 years prior: no problem on the day.

I'm in Australia, so buying a phone and paying for a connection is a bit different. I bought a Nokia (Finland, not China) about 7 years ago. It still works fine, having had software updates just once, and the replacable battery is also working fine (not replaced yet).
Granted I can't do social media stuff with it ... but it makes calls, text messaging, takes (small) photos, keeps notes and a calendar. Did I mention it's design is in the style of the old Blackberry?
I volunteer at the Library, to help people who are struggling with a modern smartphone amongst other modern tech devices, so it's not that I don't know how to use one ... I just can't be bothered with the "marketing driven" desire to have a new phone every time they bring one out.