I've seen maybe five big Meetup groups here that were pretty active pre-COVID get abandoned and looking for a new organizer. It's sad.
We had a big thriving Microsoft focused community here with multiple Meetup groups and multiple events every month but that died down as they laid off developer evangelists and then closed the local Microsoft office about 2 years ago.
There is a big, broad tech Meetup group here that's kind of thriving but their biggest draw events are "anything mentioning AI" meh. It's hard for them to find places to meet that can accommodate 50-100 visitors.
We did a "restart party" at our hackerspace a few years ago. Definitely could have used a good stock of capacitors. Probably power cords. Not sure what to do with all the very specific USB-C etc. ports that break.
I was just thinking today how I miss my DSL (Damn Small Linux) setup. A Pentium 2 Dell laptop, booted from mini-CD, usb drive for persistence. It ran a decent "dumb" terminal, X3270, and stripped down browser (dillo I believe). Was fine for a good chunk of my work day.
I grabbed a used X270 right before lockdown here. I’d intended to get one for vacation as a “beater” laptop for vacation instead of my MBP. Wound up using it a lot around the house, porch, and yard. Less worried about rain and dust with it. Some light gaming works well too. Plenty of life left in it.
So much that I picked up an X220 on a deal. 10 years old and still pretty swift with an SSD and enough RAM.
I mostly use Apple Books (formerly iBooks) for this. Can highlight, add text notes, and bookmark pages. Syncs those and reading progress across devices. Also somewhat works for PDF books. Sometimes the sync screws up but mostly works.
Google Books can also do this and notes go to an associated Google Doc.
I use mine a lot but have had to do two rounds of replacements due to hardware issues. The battery life is unsurprisingly short (right about 4 hours now) which only comes up on looong calls without a break.
They'd still be on my maybe top 5 list for recent purchases.
We had a big thriving Microsoft focused community here with multiple Meetup groups and multiple events every month but that died down as they laid off developer evangelists and then closed the local Microsoft office about 2 years ago.
There is a big, broad tech Meetup group here that's kind of thriving but their biggest draw events are "anything mentioning AI" meh. It's hard for them to find places to meet that can accommodate 50-100 visitors.