No, this is not some deep theological or philosophical treatise but instead a declaration that one of our notebooks, an HP Envy Ultrabook 6, is no more.
As far as I can tell we bought it in August 2012 so it was close to 13 years old. It had fairly heavy use in its earlier days - so much so that the monitor hinge broke and we left it open most of the time once it had been repaired.
It had only intermittent use in recent years - reappearing for a month-or-two at a time to have updates installed or maybe a new Linux distro installed, instead.
I last used it earlier this year, but when I tried to crank it up a couple of months ago it would start for a few seconds then power off. A bit of research suggested it could be the main battery, or the CMOS/RTC battery. I opened it up and disengaged both batteries but it still wouldn’t work even though connected to mains power. The wisdom of the internet (!) suggested if it wasn’t the battery then the motherboard was the next place to look.
Rather than invest any further in a 13 year old computer running 1366x768 graphics, I removed the HDD and installed that in the case of a USB portable drive whose disk had failed. So the Envy will be removed to the e-waste bin at the council tip soon, and the old HDD lives to backup another day.