I've been building PCs for years so I know my way around hardware but now that I'm actually starting my CS degree at state next month I realized my massive gaming tower isn't exactly gonna fit on those tiny lecture hall desks lol. I'm honestly so hyped to get started with the curriculum but I'm hit with a wall because I've never actually had to shop for a laptop that needs to be both cheap and powerful enough for some of the heavier stuff like running Docker containers or maybe some local virtualization.

I've got about $750 max to spend because I had to drop a ton on textbooks and dorm stuff already. I was looking at some refurbished ThinkPads because I know the keyboards are legendary for long coding sessions but then I saw some newer Vivobooks and now I'm just second guessing everything. I need something that won't die after two hours of compiling code and ideally has:

• at least 16gb of ram (8 is just not enough anymore for dev work)
• a decent screen because my eyes already hurt from staring at VS Code all night
• light enough to carry across campus without breaking my back

Since I'm used to just upgrading my desktop parts whenever I want its weirdly stressful picking one machine that has to do it all for the next four years. Is it better to go for a used M1 MacBook Air even though it's older or should I stick with a brand new Ryzen 7 Windows machine for the compatibility? What do you guys think is the best bang for buck right now for a student?