The design of devices which end up in land-fills by the millions, should focus on the environment, not some minuscule performance benefit. I wouldn't defend a design that increases e-waste, but to each his own.

There is no environmental benefit if we soon have tons of minimum specs laptops thrown to landfills because they don’t have enough RAM and it can’t be upgraded.

It's done because these companies would rather sell you a new computer than a new RAM stick.