I think anyone can be too dumb for anything. Personally, there are many things that I feel like I am too dumb for. Specifically things that require artistic ability or emotional thinking. Even as a kid I find subjective topics completely baffling. I always loved math because I was either right or wrong, and I liked science because my hypothesis was some variation of right or wrong. Could I learn an instrument, sure, but by the time I get any good I could have gotten substantially better at something that clicks for me.

Don’t get me wrong, if you find it interesting and have passion for it, that could probably overcome what you are lacking with enough time.

I needed something lighter than windows 7 basic on a cheap network my girlfriend at the time (now wife) bought me when we were in high school. Ended up using Ubuntu 11.10 netbook edition. After spending 5 hours getting my Broadcom wireless card working, I was hooked. Used it until that laptop died and during that time I slowly migrated all of my computers to Linux. Only kept windows on secondary drives or a different partition for the occasional time I need it.

I like making things. And coding had an overall lower cost of entry, and lower overall cost than wood working and making custom hardware projects. I still enjoy the other two, but when money is tight or I’m waiting on delivery of supplies, I work on coding projects.

This is why I drive a 90 accord. Windows and locks aren’t even electronic.

I grew up pretty poor. When I was a kid my dad brought home a pentium 2 that didn’t work. He picked it out of the garbage, told me I could have it, but that it didn’t work.

We often rode the bus to school. We would get off at school and my parents would get off at work. And then we would meet them on the bus on the way home.

After getting the computer we started stopping off at the library, so I could check out books about computers. I would take them home and start reading. (I was illiterate until I was 10 years old, and this really kicked off my reading ability, to this day I still read 100-120 books per year)

Over time I was able to figure out enough to diagnose the issue (bad PSU and bad HDD), garbage pick replacements, and then install DOS from floppy I got from school.

From there I started picking up as many parts and computers as I could and filling my corner of our studio apartment with parts. I loved writing text files and documenting what I was doing, like a little knowledgebase of what I was figuring out. Eventually, we got evicted, and due to having to live in our car for a couple of years I had to give up my computer. Left it out in the curb. Ever since, I have been obsessed with terminal based interfaces and to this day almost exclusively use terminal.

Over the last 5 years I have went from 50k to 90k. Same company, but recently got promoted to a new department.

Using Connect. So far it has been my favorite on android.

At 50 bucks a year, I’ll just continue using logseq for all of my notes. At this point in my life, I really don’t trust anything that charges money and I can’t host myself.

I usually look for corporate office liquidations in the paper or on social media. Other than that, I stop into colleges and businesses and ask them if they have hardware they need to recycle. Companies usually pay for recycling, so sometimes they will just give you stuff to lower their recycling cost.

And lastly, ebay if all else fails.

I usually grab a 3-4 year old Thinkpad every year or so for anywhere from free to 300 bucks. I pick them up from old corporate liquidation lots. Usually grab one that is a little dirty or beat up and then just clean it up and install my own SSD and upgrade ram from my stockpile.

I like some of the others on that list, but with how cheaply and easily I can get a Thinkpad, I just can’t be bothered to spend more. I use my laptop mainly for code, and I do a lot of low-level programming so performance is usually way more than enough. The programs I write are extremely small and very efficient. Any processor from the last 20+ years will run what I am usually working on.

When I want to spend big bucks on a computer, I put that money towards my desktop where I do more gaming and some digital artwork.