Thanks for clarifying. If I understand correctly, you’re saying that in terms of energy usage, a thin client + external docking station for HDDs might have a smaller footprint than an ITX build, but at the expense of future upgradeability. On the other hand, an ITX build would likely draw more power than the thin client + external HDDs, but enables me to upgrade individual components down the road. Did I get that right?

I would only consider those thinclients if AI is something you are planning to run.

Do you mean b/c AI would require a beefy host for the thin client to connect to?

Thanks for clarifying that. One last question if you don’t mind – some listings (such as this one) say “no OS,” and “You must reload the unit to gain original factory functionality.” Are they just talking about installing my own OS or does “reloading” mean something else in the context of these thin clients that I’m not aware of?

Gotcha, although I’m in the US, so would something like this DELL WYSE 5070 THIN CLIENT Intel Celeron J4105 1.50GHZ 8GB RAM 64GB SSD No OS ($34 w/ free shipping) be comparable?

it being ARM based will cause various headaches when learning compared to something x86

Hmm, this is just enough to give me pause. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll have to think on this some more and maybe do a little more research.

Beelink ME Mini

Would something like this be suitable as a NAS + Jellyfin + Home Assistant box?

try to sneakily make me register passcodes

Can you expand on this? I’m not sure what this means. Is it like instead of a full fledged password, just a four digit PIN or something? Thanks.

How does one find such retired laptops? As an individual hobbyist in the US, would I just monitor eBay, Craigslist, or Facebook?