I picked up a 15" Macbook Air (M3) for $849 — clearance @costco early 2025.

This model only has 8gb of RAM — which is fine for streaming videos/typing — it absolutely could not be my daily driver, but makes for good casual usage.

Machines probably should ship with more than that (or a lighter operating system?), particularly when the RAM isn't upgradeable. I'll recon Apple supports at least two more macOS on these 8GB configurations.

My favorite machine only has 4GB of RAM (Core2Duo Max, Win7Pro) and works good, albeit nothing modern.