My Asus 1215B netbook from 2009 has served me well, until it died last year.
There was nothing in 2025 laptops that I would have replaced it for, the use cases haven't changed from my 2009 requirements in computing on the go with a cheap laptop like device.
Its replacement is now Samsung tablet with DEX capabilities, which I will likewise use until it dies.
Cheap netbook-like devices are widely available from China these days. They'll probably be cheap enough even accounting for the new tariffs. Or you can just buy an older 'ultrabook' laptop on the used market.
The 'cheap' angle is something I wonder about, especially for the coming year with tariffs, and especially when Microsoft is trying to tell a lot of people that they need to buy new PCs to get off win10 and I doubt a huge proportion will be able/willing to do the remaining bypasses or learn another OS. It seems like a perfect storm if you're trying to be frugal, so I assume 'frugal' is going to translate into a lot of people on unsupported systems.
I have a Centrino laptop from 2004, and it's single core, with 1.5GB RAM and, of course, spinning rust.
It works, but even playing a video on youtube can be taxing. I'm not arguing for "performance" tasks here, just sitting on the couch and surfing, and clicking random links.
Then again my home server is a 2013 i5 that does everything it needs to do (except be super power efficient). So I'd say ~10-14 years is the sweet spot, but 20 is historic and mostly useless, sadly
There was nothing in 2025 laptops that I would have replaced it for, the use cases haven't changed from my 2009 requirements in computing on the go with a cheap laptop like device.
Its replacement is now Samsung tablet with DEX capabilities, which I will likewise use until it dies.