My first laptop/PC I had from 2012, and I remembered being a Toshiba Satellite A660 and had the GeForce GTS 350M graphics chip, it had 3D vision support which I didn’t not use any of those fancy stuff like Windows Media Center. My model came with a standard DVD drive and a TV tuner.
Like a ExpressCard 34 slot for example, you can hook up a card that offers extra USB ports, a media remote for Windows Media Center setup and eGPU setup (which was finicky, but doable).
Other noticeable features like removable hard drive and easily accessible RAM slots and even a removable disc drive with just a single screw driver was missing those days unless you buy a modular laptop. With the removable hard drive, I remembered I was trying different flavors of Windows and Linux distributions back in the day.
I remember this 2012 setup was more of a proof of concept and had various Rainmeter widgets that displays CPU stats, time and so on. Another setup I had was a custom black theme with a custom bootscreen (sorry, don’t remember which one it was) running off another HDD.
Eventually I was able to afford to build a somewhat of a functional sub $1000 (AUD) PC few years after that. And slowly upgrading PC parts bit by bit. The case was a simple Agio case before moved to a darkFlash case. With a Intel Core i5 7th series* before moved to Intel Core i5-8600K and GTX 1060 to RTX 2060 before stalled a RTX 3070 Ti.
Motherboard and RAM is another thing I changed. Now is a Z370 MSI Gaming M5 motherboard with 4 x 8 GB G.Skill Trident Z RGB.
Yup, I have an EVE Spectrum One with 4K display before the brand turned into Dough. I still prefer 1440p resolution and my other screen is a simple 24″ 1080p ASUS VE248H which I have used as main since 2019 in conjunction with another Samsung 24″ 1080p screen before got swapped. WallpaperEngine and RetroBar was used.