Roberto von ArchimboldiFeb 26

I have some computer questions.

If I fork out £200, the government wants to give me a further £900 for a laptop or a machine with 4GB of RAM. I think that I should take the money. But what should I buy? I would like it to be repairable because I spill things a lot and a modern laptop is not going to go obselete, I think

I need Windows because there is not yet workable voice to text software for Linux. As the government are going to pay for the licence, can I run windows in a virtual machine inside, say, Debian? Would that stop windows spying on everything else I do?

I would like a three button mouse because then I can use the middle button as a drag lock.

I am happy to buy refurbished machines but I feel like at that price I will be able to buy some that goes whiz-bang and that sounds fun.

#Laptops, #Debian, #AdviceNeeded , #ConsumerQuestions

Show threadmilagemayvary

@RobertoArchimboldi

You could get away with 8GB of ram, install zram on debian for RAM compression to get double usable memory with default settings.

16GB of physical memory would be ideal though,  is memory hungry & it's likely as Win11 ages it'll be demanding more ram.

Feb 26 at 12:47pmWeb
Show threadRoberto von ArchimboldiFeb 26
@milagemayvary that sounds clever. It also seems that whatever I do, I am going to need more than 4GB of RAM
Show threadmilagemayvaryFeb 26

@RobertoArchimboldi

Likely.

For  a strict 4GB of ram in a desktop system is criminal in 2026.

You would likely max out after opening up a browser & an electron based app or maybe something like MS Word/Excell + browser.