> Uncles don’t let relatives buy less than 16gb ram. That has been my standard since ~2010 and our 2013 mbp is still running fine because I insisted on it.
Just last weekend I bought 8gb ram thinkpad t14 for an elderly relative. 240 EUR.
It replaces his thinkpad x220 where the fan and ssd slowly dies.
I doubt it becomes an issue, and if it does then I can upgrade it later.
You can do it once and spend an extra hundred dollars or do it twice, including occasional restrictions to the user. Poor tradeoff imho.
This is a young person with a long life ahead, we shouldn’t buy disposable ewaste with a short life.
Someone has to buy that (presumably second-hand) laptop to prevent it from becoming e-waste. 8GB can be plenty for a student, most don't need much beyond a browser and PowerPoint. Many of my university colleagues were using new $5,000+ MacBook Pros exclusively for Google Docs, that seems more wasteful to me.
8gb ram is not enough for normal browsing if you are forced to use windows 11 which eats easily half of it.
> we shouldn’t buy disposable ewaste with a short life.
Indeed. That makes two of us.