This article was requested by my brat of a younger sister1. No, I will not take requests from randos. I have her on a Pact Of Favours Owed so It’s. Different. T. M.

Anyway, back to the reason this exists:

There once was a company called Microsoft, who brought computing to the masses, through the might of Dos Windows. And in the beginning, all was well with the world. People could write documents, connect to the internet, troubleshoot their own shite (mostly), and, yeah there were some Bad Actors (MSI/FOXCONN I WILL NEVER EVER FORGIVE YOU AS LONG AS I LIVE AND BREATHE YOU HEAR ME?!?!?! YOU HEEEAR MEEEE?!?!?!), but for the most part, it was pretty nice.

And then…. Arithmetical Idiocy happened. Which, okay cool, whatever. It’s a fancy predictive model of spitting words when greeted by other words through probability and matrix algebra, that they made stateless by replaying the entire ledger with every new transaction. Pretty cool, but governments and companies would never put all their eggs in a basket made solely of band-

They Put All Their Eggs In A Basket Made Solely of Band-Aids.

Right. Awesome. I’m not even going to go into the sociopolitical ramifications of this, because it is NEVER as simple as any influencer or article wants you to believe (It is NEVER a blanket “this good, that bad”, anyone who says otherwise is a liar, and it is on you to navigate the waters to the depth necessary to satisfy your hopefully-well-gathered requirements. Hell, I even derive Legitimate Benefits from this AI bubble Right-Now-Today.). Here is what I will go into:

Because of this, Nvidia is prioritising Data Centre chips over consumer chips.

Because of this, Micron has left the general consumer market completely, opting only to sell RAM to data centres.

Because of the above, prices for ALL computing technology rise, because a computer CANNOT EXIST without RAM, and you’re not doing fancy maths without a GPU of any kind. (Also Gaymurz tend to refuse Everything Except The BestTM. And don’t even @me on that spelling; I have the right.)

Because of the Infinite-Band-Aid Conundrum (IBAC because why not), prices for everything start climbing up, people start falling back to slower technologies. Regardless of if they are a governdrone or a corpodroid or a normie. This means the prices start cascading. Oh and guess what? Storage controllers need RAM too.

Meaning, now even the lore of yesteryear is climbing in price, very quickly introducing a logistical problem of how to acquire technology when it is becoming ever expensive to own your own processing. And yet - the people must compute. Modern society literally depends on it. So how do Catch-16 solve?

Microsoft, et al have a plan for this - The Cloud! Essentially, you don’t NEED to buy compute because you can just subscribe to borrow THEIR compute.

At this point, I am going to present a serious choice to you. For a large number of people, you possibly included, from where the compute grows matterth not, nor doth the contracts therewith. A lot of people will prioritise ease of use over autonomy and data control. If you genuinely do not care, or if you want a solution that Just Works without muss or fuss, then the corporate option is honestly worth considering. If you have enough money to purchase your own quality compute anyway, this guide is largely not applicable.

Finally, if you do not have it in you to fight tooth and claw, you will very likely not listen to a damn word in this guide. Answer those questions within yourself before you proceed, because this guide is not pretty. If you are not resolved, your time may be better spent elsewhere.



















































… Very well. Let us begin.

I will get one thing out of the way now: This is NOT a guide on how to game on the cheap, nor how to put a streaming rig together. The reality of the situation is that you’re probably not in a position to snag bells and whistles on a dime. Which gaming IS. You’re also probably not putting Windows on a device made on a budget. Windows will waste absolutely zero time in slurping up 8GB of RAM just to run itself, and merely possessing above that amount will cost well above the Absolute Price Ceiling, without even considering the rest of the device. These two facts together mean you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle for your continued computing.

In order for anything that follows to make sense, we need to define what a Bare Minimum Acceptable Computer (BMAC) is capable of doing:

  • A BMAC is capable of persistent storage. This sounds obvious, but ramdisks exist among other things.
  • A BMAC is capable of running programs/applications installed by the user.
  • A BMAC is capable of removing programs at the request of the user.
  • A BMAC is capable of reading and writing plain text files.
  • A BMAC is capable of word processing (HIGHLY FUCKING IMPORTANT: I said Word Processing, NOT Micro$#@! Warp! Most things that say they need Office can be done with LibreOffice instead. If you Hard-Need Office, then either you can use the webapp, or if the organisation demanding Office also demands No-Cloud-Office, they can provide you the necessary compute.)
  • A BMAC is capable of spreadsheet compositon and viewing.
  • A BMAC is capable of reading and writing slidedecks.
  • A BMAC is capable of reading PDFs. Writing is not a requirement, but the vast majority of solutions will be able to anyway.
  • A BMAC is capable of reading (viewing) and writing (making/editing) image files. The quality of the writing/editing need not be good; it just needs to be able to do so at all.
  • A BMAC is capable of reading (viewing) video files. There is no requirement to be able to make video files, as video editing is highly intensive.
  • A BMAC should be capable of viewing audio files. If the user is blind, this becomes a hard requirement, and ignore all image/video-related requirements.
  • A BMAC is capable of mounting and unmounting file systems from external devices. This allows for backups, ad-hoc transfers, and sneakernet. A BMAC is allowed to require adapters or power-down for this purpose.
  • A BMAC is capable of security controls to authenticate the user. Such a device should be capable of handling multiple user accounts, but that’s not a hard requirement.
  • A portable BMAC is capable of user data encryption. Portable means that the BMAC has its own battery and can be reasonably transported/operated in public with only your body and a surface on which the BMAC may be rested. Such a BMAC should support Full-Disk Encryption, but anything is better than nothing.
  • A BMAC is capable of maintaining a current date and time. This should be able to happen even without internet and nominal power, ie via CR2032, but it’s not a hard requirement.
  • A BMAC is capable of connecting to a network. Preferably, a BMAC can access networks wirelessly.
  • A BMAC is capable of running a web browser.
  • A BMAC is capable of reading and writing E-Mail. It is not required to send or receive the E-Mail directly. Use of a web service is acceptable.
  • A BMAC is capable of running code a user writes in some way in some reasonable language. (Before the Cancers of the world harp on me, RUST IS NOT A REQUIREMENT! IT IS A NICE-TO-HAVE! IF THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CODE ON YOUR COMPUTE IS BY FUCKING JAVASCRIPT GUESS WHAT YOU’RE A FRONT ENDER NOW; DEAL WITH IT. Any programmer who cannot adapt to their operating environment Deserves to fail.)
  • A BMAC is capable of performing all of the above locally, under its own power. A BMAC cannot require outsourcing of requirements to cloud services.
  • A BMAC is capable of performing all of the above in its stock configuration. A BMAC cannot require hardware modification or defeatable jailbreaking to accomplish.

Aaand those are the minimum requirements. Notice that nothing is mentioned about speed, or ease-of-use, or pixel density, or anything like that. This is by design. If you have enough money to be picky about speed, etc, then you don’t need this guide.

The main argument that sparked this discussion was a mention that consumer computing will become unaffordable, and soon after, nonexistent. I do not hold this position as stated.

Specifically, I amend this statement, saying that Easy Consumer Computing is what is under threat. Easy means, the OS is configured for you, speeds are nice, there’s a defined ecosystem, the mainstream knows generally how to operate it, etc. Windows devices, Apple devices, iPhones, that sort of thing. You know, the kind of computing where you don’t have to scrounge up your own Cyberdeck.

My line-in-the-sand is that a BMAC will always be able to be had for less than an Absolute Price Ceiling which if exceeded will price entire classes of people out of their own devices. The number I have received as this APC was $200 USD.

I’m not sure how hard a ceiling that is, so I will make blurbs for multiple APCs including $1000 (which is ludicrous), $500 (which is a LOT, but also not high enough to where you can willy-nilly ignore shite), $200 with an honorable mention of $300 (This is the target), $150 (I was given a range), and $50-$100 (at this point, you’re in dire straits). The devices/prices in this guide are accurate as of Juneteenth 2026 (which is technically in the past but shh), but prices can and do change so I will be touching a lot on philosophy, attitude, and state of mind.

THE LUDICROUS APC - $1000#

If your budget is above this number then you’re still in good shape. You can pick up a Steam Machine, or a Framework, and not give a shite.

If you’re restricted to 3-digit computers, on the other hand, then really your only constraint is that you can’t just go for top of the line or super enthusiast. But you can reliably get machines that can game, and pretty easily at that. Heck, with Steam Machine out, people have a price/performance target to handily defeat (LTT may have their flaws, but they ARE an accessible channel). Hells, you can even take this PCPartPicker guide and slim down just a feew things or save a little more and boom.

Now, the fact that THAT was called modest and THIS $750 THING IS CONSIDERED ENTRY LEVEL SOMEHOW FOR GAMING…. Take that to Heart. NOW.

THE REASONABLE APC - $500#

At this point you have to start making sacrifices. Do you want RAM? Do you want Graphics- scratch that you’re probably relying solely on iGPU at this point. There ARE dGPU setups you can get at this price, but like…. you can still kind of game on a lot of iGPUs, sort of. I could, anyway, but I’m a weirdo, and if I didn’t disclaim that I might get tortured with Windoze installs.

To make a point: I made this theoretical PCPartPicker setup trying to hang onto 16GB of RAM. To do this, I skimped on CPU, Motherboard, Cooler, POWER SUPPLY(!!!) and I’m STILL over the limit!!!

Then I sacced down to 1x8GB, boosted up the CPU, and got This Configuration, which STILL SKIMPS ON PSU, BY THE WAY!!! But at least it’s within spec.

There do exist prebuilt laptops at this price though, so I’m not really worried. This is just me proving the concept of you will have to think about what you want.

THE SPECIFIED APC - $200#

Now THIS is what I imagine y’all are REALLY curious about.

It is at this point that you have to expand your definition of what an Acceptable Computer is, and venture OUTSIDE the box.

SSDs? Nope. ATX-anything? Nuh uh. AM5? NO. AM4? HAH. Intel iWhatever- GET OUT OF HERE.

Processor. Display. Power. Storage. Peripherals. You No Longer CARE how $#@!!y anything is, you just need SOMETHING. And it ALL has to be under $200.

Sounds fun! LET’S GET TO WORK.

First order of business: Processor. Thankfully, you can still find Raspberry Pis that are fairly cheap on Amazoom. AND IT ALSO COMES WITH POWER AND STORAGE. Meaning we have $90 to work with for peripherals and display!

Second order of business: Display. We can snap up a nice pretty display for about $40, leaving us about $40 left for the final piece: Peripherals. I found this cheap little fancy set for just shy of $15, bringing us to a grand total of 110+40+15 = $165! ($170 if you somehow do not have microHDMI and need to snag one separately)

I actually took a little while to find a way to lower this down into that $150 threshold, and found a nice method to do so by Changing Out The Display. This is a far tinier display which will offer a worse experience, BUT you do save $15 about!

Now, is 32GB a lot of storage? Absolutely Not. and 1GB of RAM total is insane. Honestly, you may want to swap out of RaspiOS and into a minimalist Linux like Alpine or even go full UNIX if you’re serious about this.

But it gets the job done.

And even if you don’t want to assemble something yourself, you can search for laptops under a certain price range, like under $100, for example. There are of course tradeoffs involved with that, but the tighter your budget, the less room you have to complain. Whining is a luxury, after all.

THE HOPELESS APC - $50#

Here is when SO MANY of those BMAC requirements start baring your teeth.

Computers below $50 that meet these requirements…. are basically limited to absurdly cheap Android smartphones, unless you get really lucky with a laptop (I’ve found some refurb Chromebooks for around there, and Amazoom CLAIMS to have SOME macbooks under $50, but my instinct tells me those are all lies.)

The phones, though, those are real. Like This one for $28-ish and This Other One For Thirty.. I had to be careful to put in ones that didn’t have a $20 shipping charge tacked on, because THAT is also costs!

Now, you may protest at me saying that with Google’s Lockdowns, an Android Phone cannot GIMP or run code or anything like that. So let’s Go Down The List.

Cheap Android Smartphones are capable of…

  • Persistent Storage: YES.
  • Running programs/applications installed by the user: YES.
  • Removing Programs: YES* (Caveat: Not every Android App can be removed or even Disabled. We’re talking Googled Post-Lockdown Android here.)
  • Reading/Writing text files: SO MANY text editor apps on Google Play.
  • Word Processing: YES. Hell, Microsoft Office has Android Apps. But other options exist. Will they have ads? Yeaaah…. but….. beggars can’t be choosers here.
  • Spreadsheet: ALSO YES.
  • Slidedeck: YES.
  • Reading PDFs: Web Browser. But also countless other apps.
  • Read/Write Images: Most Gallery Apps let you mark over images, creating annotations, etc. This technically counts as editing. Failing that, paint apps exist.
  • Read Video: YES.
  • Audio: YES. Recorders are STANDARD.
  • Filesystems from External Sources: YES. MicroSD cards are often popular, and I’m pretty certain you can get a USB drive in there somewhere. Else, the phone ITSELF can be a “flash drive” onto a computer, fulfilling this scope in reverse.
  • Security Controls: PIN, Pattern, Bio- actually don’t use biometrics.
  • Encryption: Standard Android Practice. Also Secure Boot.
  • Date/Time: RTC.
  • Network: DUH. Also, Yes the phones up there are locked to a mobile carrier. That doesn’t matter when you have WLAN.
  • Browser: Chrome.
  • Email: Also Chrome. Also Gmail App.
  • Running your own Code: YES. ACTUALLY. Chrome can’t go into your local files, BUT BRAVE CAN AND IT’S ON PLAY STORE. Now BEFORE ANY OF YOU THROW PITCHFORKS AT ME, Brave is NOT a browser to be trusted!!! They like to MITM the links you click to get their own affilitate bonuses, among other things. HOWEVER! If you’re only using Brave as a JS runtime that can run files you wrote with your TEXT EDITOR app, that threat model no longer exists. And As I Said, ANY reasonable programming language IS acceptable, and JAVASCRIPT is REASONABLE, even if it’s a language that sucks.
  • Running Locally: Yes. Airplane mode.
  • Stock Configuration: Googled Android is a restricted environment. Hence why I hammered home about EVERYTHING BEING ON THE PLAY STORE.

Which means! a $30 android smartphone IS, as much as I HATE Googled Android, a BMAC.

But what if you really, REALLY do not want an Android at this price? Well, first, anything below $50, and especially $30, and it’s Take What You Can Get. But if you’re willing to Box Of Scraps this shite, it’s possible. How? Why Simple, our wonderful friend, The Raspberry Pi, comes in an even more budget form-factor. Just take all the peripherals you would use in the bigger-Pi version, add in a microUSB-multiUSB hub, get an appropriate power supply, and boom, you now have a non-Googled, sub-$30 BMAC. This is… absurd, adorable, insane, and honestly recommended over the Android any day of the week. (An editing voice in my head flippantly announced that THIS BMAC CAN in fact run Rust. I’m not sure how I feel about this.)

By demonstrating that acceptable compute exists as little as $20 (if bare minimum indeed), I have hopefully solidified the argument that even in these dire times, The Next Generation is not Locked Out Of Computing. Now, what we have to acknowledge is that Prices Change, that’s HOW we got into this mess in the first place. Now hopefully the global market stabilises and prices start climbing back down a little bit, because even as things are Right Now, we’re still in an okay state.

However, prices may continue to skyrocket out of control, and we need to be prepared for that. Therefore, it would be irresponsible of me to just post all of these stats and figures and say QED LOL YOUR MOVE NOOBSALOT. So now we go into Computer Affordability Tactics (Mrow!)

CAT 0 - RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT#

Part of the reason multi-thousand-dollar systems get to charge multiple thousands of dollars is there’s no need to brain. You HAVE all the CPU you could ever need, all the GPU you could ever want for your AAAAAA titles, all the storage you could ever need (Let’s be honest, we all want MORE). all the RAM, all the Bandwidth, all the shiny peripherals and bleeding colours and and and-

Yeah, we’re in the trenches. That means we have to figure out what exactly it is that we NEED versus what we REALLY REALLY WANT. This becomes harder the tighter your budget is, because unfortunately, Boots Theory works AGAINST us here.

If you need an on-the-go system? Then nothing that requires A/C power is acceptable. Need a wider screen? Then find something else to skimp on. Raw CPU not good enough? See what else you can scale back on, but in the 2-digit APCs you’re probably scaled back to the wall already.

For some examples on research, notice that in the $50 APC, there did exist an answer to “Android Not Acceptable”. It’s not PRETTY, but Building Your Own Microcontroller-based computer is a thing.

Ditto, in the $500 tier, look at the differences you could make by SACRIFICING HALF YOUR MEMORY.

If you just go out and get a $20 android expecting it to be just as good as your computer or flagship phone or anything like that, you are going to crash and you are going to burn. If you penny-pinch the wrong thing and now your device cannot meet your goal, you have also set yourself up for a nosedive.

Another example of Researching is, when I reviewed this guide after hearing a mild criticism about a 1GB model and web browsing, I tried to find a way to up that without needing any computer equipment beforehand. So, starting with the $165/$200 RasPi 1GB example above, I swapped it out for This Thingy, which will put us at $170 assuming the travel monitor. However, now we need to actually BUY the Storage. If we’re only looking at Amazoom, we can grab an SD Card for $20, or a 3-pack of less-reputable cards for $30, or if you’re really desperate, a preloaded OS card, NOT THAT I SERIOUSLY RECOMMEND THE LATTER. BECAUSE I DON’T. Not from them anyway.

If you WANT a reliable Pre-Load, you can grab This Card from PiShop instead. This is $30, and you may have to spring an extra $10 for shipping, making this $210 technically (you can drop to the 7inch display if you really cannot find an extra ten bucks to put it within the Specified APC.), AND IT’S DOUBLE THE STORAGE. Plus it’s from a highly reputable company.

Additionally, if you have access to a Micro Centre, use it. They’re likely going to have the best deals possible, and you can explore other options I didn’t even cover here. Just don’t be irresponsible with your purchases.

All this to say, if you really do your research, and analyse to find an option that you can squeak by with, now you’re in business.

CAT 1 - THE STOPGAP#

The fact that Sam Vimes’ Theory Of Economic Unfairness kicks in, while unfortunate, has ONE light at the end of the tunnel: Saving Up remains competitive at every tier of computational expense.

But sometimes you can’t afford to wait any longer and HAVE to buy cheap. That’s the whole point of Boots Theory. But while you can’t get around that, what you can do, is invest.

No I don’t mean the stock market- well maybe I do, but no, what I’m trying to say is that you don’t have to go from nothing to Full Kit in one buy.

The core of this is simple: If you hit your APC once, you can hit it again later, and very likely will. This can fall apart at, say, APC=1000USD, which is a tonne of currency in its own right, but if you have no hope of getting back to $1000, then THAT’S NOT YOUR APC AND YOU SHOULD NOT BE TREATING IT LIKE IT IS. Conversely, however, I don’t care what your nominal income is, if you’re in a place where coffee is excpected to cost $10, you can get $20 in some manner.

There are two main strategies for employing The Stopgap to keep your compute affordable.

The Appetiser - The first way you can perform The Stopgap is by buying a full tier or two below your APC, then bank the remainder until you make your full APC again, which will let you jump to potentially a higher tier than you originally had access to. As an example, say your APC is $500 but you REALLY want some bells and whistles, maybe a dGPU. You can pick up a $200 or even $300 laptop or raspi config/etc, and run with that, pocketing the two-to-three-hundred you saved until you get another $500, which now puts you at $700-$800. Hey That “Entry Level Gaming PC” PcPartPicker set is now fully available, AND you might even save on peripherals and/or display!

The Upgrade - The second way you can perform The Stopgap is by upgrading your existing configuration. VERY IMPORTANT: The Upgrade can ONLY function if you ALREADY HAVE compute power. If this is your first, then you have to buy at or below APC first, then upgrade later. The central philosophy of The Upgrade is that every part of your kit is piecemeal, so once you have a full kit, you can upgrade one component at a time, to get better and better performance until you not only have Theseused your entire build, you likely have a second, FULLY FUNCTIONABLE build from the remains.

Let’s talk about the obvious use case of The Upgrade: APC is 500 but you want a kickass gaming desktop. Well, you ain’t getting that first. But what you CAN do, is start with The Ryzen 5 7600X Build from before, and save up another couple hundred dollars or so.

THE VERY FIRST THING YOU WILL WANT IS TO UPGRADE THAT PSU AS SOON AS YOU CAN TO SOMETHING WITH A BRONZE/GOLD RATING, maybe also 700-800W for reliability. Your next major upgrade should be $100-$200 for a set of 2x8 (REPLACE YOUR INITIAL RAM STICK). Then bump up to an NVMe drive for probably another $100-200, for extra boost. Maybe a fancier cooler. and $30ish for a WLAN card. Save up even half as much APC and swing in with your final upgrade into a RTX5050/RX7600 GPU. Maybe stronger if you can swing it.

BOOM! Now you’re flirting with a near-$1000 GPU, and those older parts can get their own CPU/Mobo/CaseIsOptional and you have a testbench OR secondary computer!

Yes, all of this probably sounded beyond obvious, especially since this was what AM4/AM5 chipsets were EXPLICITLY REVERED FOR ENABLING.

But what if you can’t afford a modular solution like that and are stuck with a Raspberry Pi 5 1GB configuration? Well, save up another $180-$200 and you can LITERALLY QUADRUPLE YOUR RAM (But CrazyGirl, this is below $200!! Why didn’t you specify this in the $200 tier?! ANSWER: BECAUSE IT’S NOT A COMPLETE SOLUTION BY ITSELF) You may notice that I advocated buying JUST the processor/motherboard without ANY OF THE OTHER FOUR PIECES. How Dare I?!?! You see it’s all too simple: you already have the other four pieces. Just pull your storage out of the old Pi, disconnect said Pi, and hook up the new Pi and put in the card. Behold, the power of The Upgrade.

Oh, you think JUST replacing the CPU is the only thing you can do? Nuh uh. Another $100 and you upgraded your display all the way to a full and proper monitor. Oh and never forget that THE PI IS AN UNDISPUTED MASTER OF THE UPGRADE GAME. For another $100, you can pick up A LITERAL EXPANSION CARD FOR THE PI and either A Name-Brand NVMe Drive or A trusted albeit still cheaper store brand and now you’re running the kind of storage tech the big rigs have (well, probably a tad slower but still!) For an extra $100 you can bump that storage to 2TB. Alternately, for $200 you can pick up An NPU coprocessor for your Pi, For $40 you can boost the audio of the Pi and possibly get it to stack with one of the two other pieces. There’s also the fact you HAVE 40 GPIO PINS to tinker with as you wish. Or you can pick up an entirely different SoC board if you find one more to your liking.

In short, you can start small, and slowly climb your way to bigger and better tech stacks, all the while learning critical skills that will give you valuable tools in the fight to keep your computing Personal.

Unfortunately, there IS a device that is largely immune to The Upgrade: smartphones. There really aren’t any widely usable ways to piecemeal a phone together. BUT they make EXCELLENT Appetisers. So keep that in mind.

CAT 2 - COMMUNISM(TM)#

When everyone needs a thing, but that thing cannot be controlled by one person, what did the people do? Easy - devise a system for shared access, governed by rules by which to play if you want the pay.

Technically, every group of people does this to some degree: governments, corporations, communes, family units, religious sects, you name it, they’ve done it.

And there is no law, no corporate policy, no act of god that can patch out this strat.

So you did your research, concluded that you absolutely require a $500-level computer, but can only ever scrounge up $300 and that’s really forcing it?

Buddy Up, Chuckleduck. Find a person, or two, with whom you can share the burden of paying for the tech, and accept that you now both own the computer communally.

Why this works is simple: You may require dedicated private compute, but you do not have that requirement every minute of every day. When you don’t need the device, they can use it. And when they don’t, you can use it. If you both need the device right that instant, that’s on yall to figure out.

But what if you are averse to having your compute not be, well, personal? You still can’t afford it on your own, and you still need the higher tier for some unspecified reason that I trust you researched.

Then you have barter, trade, and The Upgrade. Find someone whos throwing away a computer. Or maybe someone has a second they’re willing to part with. See if they’re willing to hand it off to you instead, or see what you can provide to them in exchange.

But whatever you do, DO NOT ACT ENTITLED. You may have some concept of a right to technology, but ABSOLUTELY NOBODY IS REQUIRED TO PROVIDE ANY TO YOU, NOT EVEN FOR MONEY. You don’t get to choose. You get to either accept whatever deal, or walk away. If your argument to me is “I have the RIGHT to Personal Computing!”, then guess what? Micro$#@! is more than happy to provide you Computing, on a Personal account. Go away and let those of us who actually give a shite work in peace.

Now if the deal won’t yield you what you need, it may still be good. You can combine that with your APC to perform The Upgrade the rest of the way. Or you can make concessions and work with what you got, because at least you have The Stopgap.

CAT 3 - CORPORATE EXPLOITATION#

One of the primary shared beliefs of Communism’s proponents is that Capitalism and Corporatism can only work through exploitation, while Communism is purely equitable. Anyone who has operated in The Workplace at any level understands that exploitation is a two-way street. This guide is not an essay at which you can just say “But but power discrepencies” and Spock-Disproves-Paper away.

If you’re not willing to capitalise on opportunity when you can, you’re not willing to own your own compute. I said what I said.

One way you can artificially lower your APC is by actually taking Micro$#@! up on their cloud offering, and using it when you don’t need privacy. A lot of things don’t necessarily need to be done on your own system, and you can use E-Mail to transport key files over to your Personal Computer that you can optimise primarily for storage. APPARENTLY THIS ALSO DOESN’T WORK AND I’LL PUT AN ADDENDUM BELOW. Another way to strike above your APC is to take advantage of sales and bundles offered by various vendors. A time-tested way to keep your costs down is to buy prebuilds if you’re between the $200 and $500 APCs. Less effort on your part, warranties aplenty, and a lot of the time, you’ll get a better deal on a couple of the components inside.

“But that’s just playing into the corpos’ hands! You’re not exploiting anything?!” In a society with Freedom Of Association (which most people reading this article are in), a transaction is voluntary, meaning it will only ever occur if both parties to the transaction have received consideration and agree to transact. Your desperation versus the vendor’s stability is leverage that lets them walk away when you won’t, but you’re still optimising your situation, thus exploiting the levers you DO have.

The same mechanism exists with employment, albeit having an income is far more immediately pressing than not having compute. But even desperation won’t allow the higher-ups absolute control. If they cannot give you any consideration at all, you just won’t work. If working 10hr/wk retail does not improve your situation at all, then you’re just going to not work and pocket the time. All of this to say, naturally, that training up for and securing employment will give you a lot more leverage and boost your APC considerably. For evidence in support of this point, look at any paycheque and what it does for its holder.

In short, the message is: don’t be afraid to reward odd pricing behaviour from companies if it legitimately benefits you. You cannot menaingfully affect their bottom-line on your own, and any scale that can is not going to come into existence because of you. So I give you permission to prioritise your own situation before those of others.

And one more thing - You can always pick up parts at companies, but skip the $100-$200 Windows activation. Linux and UNIX are free, and dropping Windows is a boon to your APC in the lower levels.

CAT 4 - BACKUPS AND REPAIRS#

Planned obsolence is a PRIMARY income generator for computer companies. If your machine breaks down. you have to buy a new one. This is ESPEICALLY true with phones and laptops. But you can mitigate the impact to you in a couple ways.

First and foremost is having a secondary/fallback source of compute, even if it’s not as powerful as your main/min-rqmts build. This is kind of like The Stopgap except in reverse. This protects you somewhat if your primary resource critically fails, which you should plan on that happening (Remember APC is NOT a windfall; it is a dollar amount you should be able to reliably save up to.). You can scale the backup compute strategy down to just essential components for your primary/sole source of compute, making that component immune to price shocks until you end up falling back to it, at which point renewing your backup will be subject to market conditions.

This small-scale backup at the component level blends into the second part of CAT4 which is repair. If you can get the skills to fix the chips and boards in your compute, you can resurrect computing resources from the dead. Every computer resurrected is a computer that DOESN’T put you out of your APC because you had to fork additional casholene. PLUS, if you get skilled enough, you can turn that ability into income, not only boosting your own APC, but also giving you more experience, fostering community relations, and getting you the ability to start tapping into economies of scale if you play your cards right. You’re essentially minmaxing at that point, to a scale that I can’t even do.

And did I mention it means you can pick up a broken computer for next to nothing, patch it up, and maybe save $500 OR MORE on your compute?!

There you go.

CAT 5 - RESILIENT TENACITY#

This Computer Affordability Tactic is singlehandedly the most important of the six.

When I said Easy Compute is what is at risk, I meant it. I’ve done drafts of this article with the requestor, and she still wholeheartedly believes that All Compute will Just Be Gone Forever for people. As much as that mindset bothers me… she has a point. Many newcomers, and probably some of you who read all the way through, will allow yourselves to be phased out of cybrespace because it’s Too Hard and Nothing’s Gonna Matter Anyway.

The moment you give in is the moment you relinquish control to the Current State Of Affairs, which we all know to be impartial, and some even say malevolent.

If prices shock to where the technological meta is even more restrictive in the future, all of these CATs will be that much more necessary to allow you to stay in the Personal Compute game. Maybe you have to use an SD card or an HDD for storage. Maybe you have to fall back to an old Pentium. Hopefully it’s just that your formerly-top-tier computer has aged and is now not keeping up with the latest Games. (let’s be real, you’re not here if that’s your situation.)

And then there’s the likely chance that you assemble your hundreds of buckaroos, get your components piecemeal, hook everything up, and…. something’s DOA and they won’t let you return it.

Each setback is an opportunity for you to drop out of the fight For GoodTM and if you want to continue having your own infrastructure, you’re going to have to not do that dropping out thing.

It is this Computer Affordability Tactic that produced this article in the first place. I was challenged that compute was just gone, and I knew in my heart that it was false. I did the research, I brought up counterexamples, the whole Cloud Compute thing was brought up as a point that I was conveniently missing, and then… I was asked to make this. So I did, then I was stunned to find that 16GB of RAM doesn’t custom-build for $500 anymore. Then I was alarmed at how a setup for a Pi 5 2GB was about $200 minimum.

I think it was about when I successfully proved that Googled Android could code that Ren saw enough momentum that could be made into an article.

But this high-adversity environment… this is how humans lived for tens of thousands of years. We live in the most gentle times, even today. And that may have atrophied peoples understanding of what it means to fight tooth and claw for every momentary morsel, of what it means to survive against overwhelming odds, of what it means to persevere and force destruction over defeat.

If you truly want something, you WILL make the changes and sacrifices to bring it to fruition. If you don’t… then you will wash aside.

And That’s Okay. Not everyone in the next gen will have truly personal computing. That’s a truth I’m willing to accept. I think this hole even existing is what has my younger sister up the wall, but she’s always been the Equal Outcome to my Equal Opportunity.

And finally, don’t be discouraged if you read all of this and conclude that you’re not worthy. You persevered all the way through. That’s better than most. If you have even that tiniest spark within you, then lay my words upon it as kindling, and sooner than you think, you’ll find yourself ready.

But you can code in a restricted environment. You can get on the internet for 2-digit numbers of dollars. You can assemble your own Cybredeck, whether mobile or not. You can learn a new Operating System. You can troubleshoot when something goes wrong because something will go wrong.

And if you continue to endure, and adapt, and improvise, and overcome, then nothing will be eternally out of your reach.

CONCLUSION / FOLLOWUP#

With these words you now are about as able as I am to maintain computing autonomy in an increasingly-hostile environment, if not even more so. I think I will be doing some experiemrnts involving Raspberry Pis, Hardware Attachments, and tasks like Gaming, Streaming, and more. The purpose of these will be as continuations which, while I’ll be targeting the $500 tier, can be made with three easy payments of $199.99.

So stay tuned, and never surrender your dreams and ambitions.

ADDENDUM 0 - WHAT THE DUCK MICRO$#@!#

So during final review, Ren looked up some numbers and concluded that it would cost about $80 per month to have a cloud compute solution that she would consider Acceptable. The most asinine part of all of this is that despite it being a cloud setup, Micro$#@! STILL expects you to front the storage burden of an entire Operating System, when the entire damned point of these setups is that they can just distribute one set of Core OS files to multiple virtual environments (Technically organizations can just do one drive for everyone, but again, Boots Theory.) THEORETICALLY this will become cheaper as Micro$#@! realises that when people do not have funding they will just plain not participate, but who knows. Maybe they’ll scale the pricing down, maybe they won’t. But I was annoyed to have to scratch out half a paragraph over this. I leave the scratched-out text because that way of thinking is still useful even if it doesn’t work in one case. And Personal Computing really is a Mind-Over-Matter affair.

ADDENDUM 1 - RASPBERRY PI IS COOL#

Also during final review, Another approach was found that involves what I affectionately like to call The Rapberry Pi Mini Edition, combined with a storage acceptor and an I/O terminal using A fancy UNIX specifically designed for this tiny thing. Technically this is $17 minus the terminal but said terminal can be in the hundreds of dollars so I have no idea where to put this. Unless of course This Eff-Off Terminal is under $100, then you can daisy chain them, but like… This is a homework assignment for you all, I already gave you the tools to survive this world. Buzz off. Heart you. Tsun tsun tsun.

AND RIGHT WHEN I WAS ABOUT TO SHIP THIS OFF I WAS REMINDED OF THE OTHER OTHER MINIATURE RASPBERRY PI… (It’s the one in the $50 APC section…. it’s that one.)

  1. the owner of this blog (words of ren here: pretty sure Luna is gonna have more posts here than I do if I don’t start writing more soon!) ↩︎