Classes start in literally ten days and my old Dell just completely died on me like blue screen of death style every five minutes so I am officially desperate. I have about $650 maybe $700 if I really push it which isnt much for a CS major I know but I am a student working part time so I gotta make it work.

I spent all night looking at stuff and everyone online says just get a MacBook Air M1 because the battery is insane and it stays cool but then I saw people on reddit saying 8GB of RAM is basically useless for compiling or running Docker containers in 2024. My logic was that if I want the 16GB version it jumps way over my budget like closer to a thousand bucks even for refurbished ones. So then I was thinking maybe a used ThinkPad? I found a T14 gen 2 online for like $450 which sounds like a steal but the screen looks kinda dim in the reviews and I am worried about the battery life if I am on campus in Chicago all day without a charger.

I am really stuck because some people say you need a crazy powerful machine but others say you can code on a potato as long as it runs Linux. I just dont want to be the guy in the back of the lecture hall whose laptop fans sound like a jet engine taking off while we are just doing simple C++ stuff. I am also looking at the Acer Swift series at Micro Center because the specs look good on paper but honestly those plastic builds always feel like they are gonna snap in my backpack after a month.

Do I really need a dedicated GPU for CS stuff or is integrated fine for everything that isnt specifically game dev? I just need something reliable that wont lag when I have 40 chrome tabs and VS Code and a couple of virtual machines open at the same time...