With the rising costs of hardware, you may find yourself having to hand onto an older machine. If you need a new computer, you may have to make do with a lower-spec device, particularly lower memory, since RAM is expensive . There's still a lot you can do with a low-end PC.
Basic productivity
Any machine can handle word processing and email
A cheap, less powerful machine is more than adequate for productivity, such as word processing, email, or spreadsheets.
Since my main job is writing, I can outline and draft pieces on my low-end machine. I'll start by putting together an outline, then when I'm happy with it, I'll draft a piece either in LibreOffice or in a web-based editor. I find I prefer working in a real word processor for prose. Where other people see a blank page and panic, a word processor seems to be my happy place as a writer.
I don't use spreadsheets as much, except mainly for data entry and formatting for my statistical coding projects, but LibreOffice proves a viable alternative to Excel. I've been using open-source alternatives to Office ever since the days of OpenOffice.org. In my college days, when I was on Mac OS X (this was before it was renamed "macOS"), I used a now-defunct offshoot, NeoOffice. LibreOffice is a worthy successor to the OpenOffice suite.
Basic image editing
GIMP is good enough for me
In my work as a writer, I do have to provide images, mainly screenshots, for my pieces, including at HTG. Since most of this work mainly involves cropping and occasionally adding annotations, this doesn't really tax the machine that much.
If I need to crop a screenshot, I can just open up GIMP and get straight to it. I don't have to wait for it to render. If I was doing more extensive graphical work, I would probably switch to a machine with a more powerful processor.
Multiple routes to Linux
Virtual machine, WSL, or on the bare metal
A lot of Linux fans like to tout that Linux is more resource-efficient than Windows and runs great on older or less powerful hardware, and I have practical experience to know that it's true.
There's the classic installing a Linux distro on a dedicated machine, running on real hardware or "bare metal." I set up a lightweight Debian environment on a laptop old enough to still have a mechanical hard drive and 4GB of RAM. The battery didn't seem to want to charge, but it was serviceable enough running from AC power. This could be a viable alternative to something like a Raspberry Pi, especially in times when those are harder to come by.
The trick is picking a distro with a lightweight environment. XFCE is my go-to. It's small enough that it runs on low-end machines without issue, and I like its modern look.
The same applies to virtual machines. I prefer lightweight Linux distros and desktop environments for virtual machines.
You can also think of WSL as a lightweight system , given that it only uses terminal programs by default.
I wish more manufacturers would offer lightweight Linux systems, but the days of netbooks seem long gone. The Chromebook seems to have taken their place.
Coding
A tiny PC can let you code some powerful stuff
While you may dream of a powerful machine, if you want to get started in coding, a low-end machine is also more than adequate. Your first projects just aren't going to need a lot of processing power or memory. It just doesn't take much to print out a "Hello, world!" message to the screen.
Most amateur programming would likely revolve around creating simple scripts.
Even supposedly more advanced tasks can run surprisingly well on low-end machines. I routinely run statistical analysis in Python and Jupyter, and the system is able to keep up. I rarely have performance problems, but then again mature methods like regression have been pretty well tuned. The LAPACK library that powers a lot of scientific computing is very fast.
If you think a less powerful machine has been holding you back from learning to code, you'd be surprised at what you can do.
Web surfing
You can be unproductive on a low-end PC, too
RIch Hein/HowToGeek.com
Going from productive to fun, it's not that much of a stretch to say that a basic machine is more than good enough for basic web surfing, social media (doom)scrolling, and online shopping. I seem to be one of those people who needs a "real" keyboard for doing things like booking plane tickets or checking my bank account.
Modern budget machines are obviously capable of handling the growing sizes of web pages, but a machine you might have repurposed is also serviceable.
Indie/retro gaming
Who needs a fancy GPU for gaming fun?
Another way you can have fun on low-end machines is through indie and retro games. I was an early supporter of GOG back when they were mostly about "Good Old Games." I like their commitment to preserving the playability of older games on newer systems . I grew up on classic MS-DOS games from the '90s and I'm glad I can revist my old favorites, particularly Sierra games like the King's Quest and Space Quest series, as well as discover some new favorites.
The indie gaming scene is also more conducive to less powerful machines than AAA games, since they tend to use simpler graphics. If you consider NetHack an indie game, its default interface is perhaps the simplest: bare ASCII text. The "DevTeam" has come out with another update after several years.
You don't need a lot of RAM or CPU power to be productive or have fun
There are lots of fun and productive things you can do on a lower-end machine. If you're finding yourself using one because you're strapped for cash or hardware availability, you can do a lot more than you thought you could before. A modern "low-end" machine would have seemed like a supercomputer 30 years ago.
