I just picked up a used Thinkpad t480 with 8th gen i5 / 16gb ram / ssd for about $120 on ebay. I believe 8th gen the first i5 quad core for laptops. And T480 is the last Thinkpad with removable battery and two dimm slots. Kindof the sweet spot between the old upgradability and modernish hardware imo

It’s still very new but I think it’s a great framework to build on. I do worry about fragmentation (each instance having its own gaming community for example). And the smaller niche subreddits I followed will be hard to replace / replicate here.

I am amazed how fast this platform has grown in a few days. Quite exciting!