If you bought your computer after 2010, there’s most likely no reason to throw it out. By just installing an up-to-date Linux operating system you can keep using it for years to come.
Installing an operating system may sound difficult, but you don’t have to do it alone. With any luck, there are people in your area ready to help!
“Borrowed” a Dell Latitude E6420 from work, put Fedora 42 KDE on it. Boots faster than my assigned laptop with Win11. Also put modded Minecraft on it for shits and giggles and it runs suprisingly well (can’t crank everything up though, of course). Worse case, will probs turn it into a server. Best case, it’s still a legit good laptop for light workloads.
Best of all, it took maybe 15 minutes to get it set up. No tinkering, no Cortana during setup, just straight install and go. There’s 0 reason to stick with Windows now. There are free/open-source alternatives for anything you may use.
If you really want to pay for something, donate to the great devs of all these great projects!