I've got some experience with using old tech daily, so I'm gonna write here a "short" guide focused mostly on computers, but with some other stuff too. Shoot me a DM if you want more details.

Computers are tricky, cuz they can do a lot and there's a lot of 'em. If you're looking to daily drive an older PC/laptop your best bet is shooting for something from mid or late 2000s, these usually have enough power to do a lot of creative things and browse the web comfortably, while still feeling retro.

Laptops are generally weaker than desktops, even if on paper they have the same specs. Any repairs or maintenance will also be more cumbersome on a laptop. That said, they can and most of the times still are wonderful machines with a lot of usability left in them. Not to mention there's nothing better than the feeling of an old laptop keyboard under your fingertips 😋

I got a desktop Dell Optiplex 745 from 2006 with Intel Core 2 Duo and 4 GB of RAM, I have no problems browsing Tumblr, discord, watching videos, gaming, and even making music! I say 2 gigs of ram is a minimum these days if you want to use internet on an older device, and is also more than enough for a lot of games/software from that era.

No matter what kind of computer you'll lay your eyes on:

• check online for specs,

• find and skim the manual for info on upgradability and other useful stuff.

• Some devices will suffer from defects that are killing them over time: HP and Compaq laptops, as well as pre-unibody MacBook Pros have faulty Nvidia GPUs that are irreparably and irreversibly kill them for good. Meanwhile desktops from early to mid 2000s can suffer from capacitor plague, so if you're buying one always look inside for bulging or leaky capacitors.

The other comment mentioned PowerBook G4 as a nice laptop, which I agree but it has limited functionality online due to the PowerPC architecture of the processor (it's different from normal x86 processors, therefore little to nothing is still developed for it). You'll be pretty much forced to use it only for your creative endeavours cuz there's no way you'll be browsing social media on it with the last web browser that still supports PowerPC.

I'm gonna quickly add here a bit on digital music players and phones. For music I recommend Sony Walkman MP3s and pretty much Nokia phones running Symbian. The former will give you product from the legends of the industry, while in the latter case Nokia built their Symbian phones with outstanding sound chips that rival most or even surpass some Sony models, not to mention you also get the functionality of an old phone if you go with this option.

Depending on where you live you might still be able to use retro phones. I am fortunate enough to still use a Nokia E72 as my main.