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Recently, I've got my hands on an Asus Eee PC 1215B from 2011, dual core CPU at 1 GHz, and 2GB ram, upgraded it to 4GB. I've decided to move to it as my main computer, coming from a decently powerful workstation. Here's my experience.
It supports every security feature I use on Arch GNU/Linux, including App Armor etc., although it doesn't support secure boot at all by any means, self signed or not, which is the only downside in this category.
It also has a built-in camera cover, which is rare these days!
For my use case (writing, IRC, lightweight Gemini browsing etc.), it does just fine, I'm surprised myself. At 1GHz, being a dual core, you'd expect very tedious performance, but surprisingly it works well with dwm and st. I don't use graphical programs at all on it though, I suppose it wouldn't fare well on Firefox and such.
When I originally got it, most of the keys were not functional. After messing with it around, I found there were lots of dust and such stuck underneath them, so I took them apart and fixed that. The mechanism is a bit iffy and very meticulous, but aside from that, the typing experience is really good, coming from a desktop. I really like how the page up and page down buttons are positioned on the side of the keyboard, making them really easy to press, compared to a desktop keyboard.
The overall build is plastic, so it can get scratched quite easily, although I personally don't mind it. The only difference I really feel is the screen, the colors are much more washed and blacks are not that black, like on a high end monitor, but that's expected, overall I don't mind that. Compared to a desktop built, I like the fact that I can carry it around the house and not sit only in a chair all day.
When it originally came with Windows installed, poor thing was suffocating. Barely could boot and battery would just die in a handful of minutes. Now with GNU/Linux installed, the battery resists a good 4 hours and performance is really good for my use case. Planned obsolescence sucks.
As others have already stated, you don't need the shiniest and newest thing. A machine from 2011 can do most of the tasks one needs, aside from video rendering or intensive gaming, or running electron programs, which should be a no no matter what system you have. The GPU market adopted the consumerist smartphone market approach, releasing new GPUs every year, that can cost up in the thousands.
The next step in the far future is probably a ThinkPad, but this is more than enough for me right now, I can fare just well with it, doing all the system administrations tasks I do.
Embrace second hand and retro computing, and as a bonus save the planet in the meanwhile :o)
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"welcome to the craptop gang, mate." -lelkins, a good friend which is an old hardware linux user