I got a refurb Dell gaming laptop from Dell Outlet with 16GB of RAM, an i7 CPU, a 4k 15.6" touchscreen display, and an nVidia GT960M GPU for about $695; that wa

I got a refurb Dell gaming laptop from Dell Outlet with 16GB of RAM, an i7 CPU, a 4k 15.6" touchscreen display, and an nVidia GT960M GPU for about $695; that was with a 20% or 25% off coupon, but those come up pretty regularly. It's a beast and plays games well. Surely, you can find something reasonable for under $600, with spec requirements as modest as the ones you've listed. My Dell isn't a nice machine, by any means...it's a standard plastic job, but when I've bought higher end models in the past, they haven't lasted significantly longer than cheapo consumer models, so I just accept the cheap feel of the thing and save the $500+ that better builds cost. It runs Linux very well today, though it didn't when I bought it, but that was due to video drivers, which would have been true of any device with a 4k display and the GT960M GPU. And, on the subject of Electron, I started using Atom at the same time I got this new machine. It runs fine, alongside Firefox with a gazillion open tabs, Thunderbird with a hundred thousand emails in the inbox, and a Gnome terminal with a dozen or so tabs.