Something kinda slightly tangential I enjoy doing is getting hardware that’s relatively old for as cheap as I can and try to make the most out of it.
I had been wanting a tablet for a long time to more comfortably read manga that my e-reader is just too small for or stuff that’s in color. And very recently i thought I could benefit from a smaller laptop since lately working from random places outside my house had been beneficial for my mental health and my current laptop is old, big and heavy.
After watching a video of a guy installing linux to give life back to an old microsoft surface I started looking around and there seemed to be a surplus of a specific model of surface clone 2-in-1 tablet by dell which was focused on enterprise users and retailed for almost $2000 in 2018. (dell 5290 2-in-1)
Won an ebay auction for a version with an i7-8650U and 16gb of ram for only $130, installed linux on it as soon as it arrived, and this thing is actually amazing. The screen is “only” 1080p but really vivid and bright. Really happy with how capable and smooth this thing feels. It underclocks considerably when in power saving mode, but I still can use it for most things that way.
While I am still buying a new device and somewhat contributing to the tech non-sense ecosystem, getting some old machine that was probably thrown away by a company somewhere kinda helps me strike that mental balance of trying to be less wasteful.