I have 0 urgency buying something more expensive than a $150 refurbished i5 16gb ram laptop.

Local AI isnt useful for agent stuff.

Same. My personal laptop is an M1 Air and I also have an M1 Studio desktop. My work machine is an M4, and in "regular" use I can't tell the difference between them.

I don’t get that sentiment. I have an m4 16gb and it’s such a sluggish machine. and that’s not even doing development, just browsers, word, excel, PowerPoint. (And so many eternal bugs… I feel like I’m on windows)