u/Grauschleier

Finally need to upgrade from my 12 year old Thinkpad T440p. I'm only doing elaborate live signal processing and multi track live sampling with Bitwig. I really wanna use the Spectral Suite live, but my current notebook is not sufficient for that.

Looking to buy a Thinkpad with touchscreen. What specs should I pay attention to? Apparently RAM cannot be upgraded anymore on newer thinkpads. Should I shoot for 64 GB then? I read that for audio processing single core CPU strength is more important, but I also got the impression that with current specs this doesn't matter so much anymore. Is that right? I'm looking at thinkpads of the t-series with CPUs like AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 350, Intel Core Ultra 5 225U or Ultra 7 255U. Which would be a good choice?
A friend also mentioned I should watch out for DPC latency issues, but googling around I got the impression that this is a software issue, not a hardware problem.

I'm an amateur player with no amateur orchestral ambitions. I play folksy and experimental stuff and I'm looking to buy a violin. I'll play live with it, maybe detune it (to cross tuning) when needed, take it to the park, travel with it. So it will be exposed to certain temperature and humidity changes.
/edit: I want to add that I'm playing without a shoulder rest, but with an extra tall hamburg style chinrest. Maybe the height of the chinrest puts more stress on the seam, because of a longer lever.

So far I was only looking into new budget violins from Gewa, Hidersine, (Alfred Stingl by) Höfner, Roth & Junius, Thomann, Stentor. I had a Gewa Maestro 2 to try and was actually quite fond of it. The "antiqued" finish didn't look so nice, though.

Recently I was also browsing ebay and, holy canoly, there are sooo many absolutely beautifully worn violins on there. Many within my budget. I realize, though, that it would be a gamble and I'd need to calculate in the expense of repairs and setup.

The other thing I'm wondering is age fragility versus modern sturdy mailorder violins. I'd assume that these new low budget violins I mentioned earlier are also just built different. Different tools, different priorities. They seem to be more on the "thick and sturdy" end of the spectrum than the "light and resonant" end.*

In your opinion - what makes more sense with this kind of budget? Talk with a local luthier that I may ask for his opinion on this or that offer on ebay from time to time or just buy a new budget instrument? With a new instrument I'd stay around 500 eur, bit lower maybe. But with an old instrument I guess that money might not pay for an instrument that is worth repairing as well as the repairs needed. So I'm prepared to go up to around 700 eur there.

*(I mean I recently went from German winter to Indonesian rain season with my Gewa Allegro viola and had absolutely no issues at all even though a girl knocked the whole case out of the overhead compartment to the floor on the first flight - which...I guess could also be a hint that the soundpost could use some work.)