But overall not really as larger and as many in California...
as well being a real full year ports. I've seen the Sound get frozen over in the Winter. I used to have investment properties up along the entire west coast. I miss Ivar's Restaurant in the old market place. Portland was a fantastic place to grab your beer and just relax. But now because of the politics in both Oregon and in Washington I sold my properties and left those states.
I'm an old man, who as been system building for over 32+ years, who was one of the old school technology reporters when Slash.dot, Ars Technica were just young punk sites (Go Commander Taco!, Evil Smoking Dude got me interested in Linux back then). I've been doing tech before Linus was a gleam in his daddy's eyes if you want to count using a TRS80 for my businesses in the crack head 80's. I've been there and I've done that, being dirt poor and stupidly rich (take that you worthless Berkeley IT for telling me that I could not run a successful computer store because I had no degree). I currently living in California dealing with people in Silicon Valley, Silicon Sacramento and HollyWierd. I kind of know what is going on so here is my viewpoint.
When this set of laws were introduced in 2016 you have to look at where it is being targeted at. It is at all of those laptops as well as those "expensive monitors". The reason why is 1. Desktops were in big year to year declines from 2010 to 2015. Laptops sky rocketed in sales as well as smaller ITX/ Client/Home theaters. I know for a fact a lot State Government workers would plug in their laptops while at work and fucking forget about it later. Go to Starbucks and see how many people are on their laptops doing work.
I almost guarantee you some hipsters/fools/idiots in government were given their instructions on how to "go green" and this was one of the results. I also believe that like anything this got heavily watered down to what you see now. So YAY... those hipsters/fools/idiots in government got their bownie points to make themselves look "GUD" so they can go up the Government Ladder. So basically one of the reason why they targeted the smaller units/laptops is because that is the majority being used at the time that the law was going to be created.
And yes I've seen this happen so... so... many times in the land of California,
where stupidity can fail you upwards and where real hard honest workers get the political ramming and feel awful and overworked.
2. MONEY. It's always about money.
California is the 4 wealthiest nation in the world. 1 for ever 8 people in the US live in California. That is why they can demand things and get away with it because they have that much influence so that manufacturers have to either comply or not.
I even think they were trying somehow for the Government to make money off of the ConSUMer when they were working on their drafts which of course was cut out... by you know lobbyists. Cough-Intel-Cough-Apple-Cough-Oracle-Cough-Tech companies- Cough-wheeze.
This is just my 2 cents but I made it here in California, because of not only using my hands but using my head as well... and because of that I got involved in the politics of the day. So I have an understanding on how this law probably started, and probably how it ended up like this.
If you have a desktop now you are fine. I mean unless they have the Thought Police I can not see them enforcing this on current units created.
Again Just my 2 Cents