The problem is that because they can't be upgraded, they are no longer 'perfectly good'.

I recently was donated a 2010 MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM, and a paltry 128GB SSD.

What the hell is anyone supposed to do with that?! If the RAM wasn't soldered to the board I could probably at least upgrade it to 8GB and someone could at least use it for email and Facebook.

So I don't really get your point.

My original point is that these laptops are not perfectly good anymore - but if I could pop that 2010 Air with 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, it could be useful for someone. A student, maybe. Boot it with Windows and you'd probably even be able to run a more recent OS.