If all that matter to you is RAM and HD space, you can as well buy a cheap desktop tower. As for "similarly spec'd" laptops if you put good perf and low consump

If all that matter to you is RAM and HD space, you can as well buy a cheap desktop tower. As for "similarly spec'd" laptops if you put good perf and low consumption in the equation, they just do not exist. Yes Intel Mac were not extremely interesting at least on the CPU + GPU + RAM + HD + power side of the equation. The M1/M2 is - esp if you also value a decent screen. And the M1 + 8GB is reasonable depending what you are doing with it.