Grabbed a second hand laptop the other week since mine is about 7 years old and not well. And with all this car BS I figured nows not the time to drop 1k on a laptop. The "new" one is 3 years old and I have to say, pretty impressed so far. Its so much quicker than my old clunker.
Computers have really come a long way in the last few years. It's not as noticeable a leap compared to one from 20 years ago, but there's still a considerable performance jump.
SSDs have helped a fair bit in that area, I've found.
I bought an old toshiba about seven years ago. still works just as well as it did when I got it. it was maybe 5 years old then. it's on windows 8 or something so no new updates to bloat it and I'm running old software on it. cost 130$ I think at the time, I had to buy new batteries at some point. but fuck, toshiba make good stuff.
Indeed I do not use it for that kind of thing. It's mostly a youtube machine these days, still good for running my music software though, which doesn't rely on internet connection.