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Get yourself an old ThinkPad if you don't care about speed.
Older, used computers will be slow, but if you know how to give em a good refresh, you can get em running well.
Translation: install Linux
Linux, SSD, 16G. Good to go.
Yeah
With mitigations=off if you're feeling brave for a bit of extra speed boost
Install Linux
That was my intent, yeah. But not everyone has the knowledge on how to install Linux and may be intimidated by its reputation of not being user friendly - not everyone knows how user friendly it can be.
You don't have to buy a computer so old that it requires a lightweight Linux distro. You can find quad-core i5s with 16GB of RAM for around $300. That will run Windows 11 just fine.
You can get a computer that good for that cheap nowadays? I must look in the wrong places for em...
Keep an eye out for Dell Refurbished to run one of their 50% off deals. Recently they had 9th-gen i5s with those specs in that price range, and they're refurbished business laptops so generally higher build quality than consumer hardware.