I’ve had good experiences with most modern Dell Laptops. Also Thinkpads. What’s “budget range” to you?

Define “up-to-date”?

Reporting is done by users who voluntarily upload their system specs via
# hw-probe -all -upload

So not skewed at all…

As you need an installation medium anyway, get those packages while you’re at it, then install them on the VM.

I ran it very successfully on a RPi4 as a media center connect to the living room TV.

However, I don’t really get your plan to virtualize them on one machine. What’s the goal here?

Much better to quickly determine CPU and memory load.

You again.

I simply cannot see how using a non-locally running and basically contained AI would work with the secrecy requirements in the (wider) engineering fields. There would certainly be situations where it could help, e.g. the mentioned translation work. Sure, you’d still need an actual human to check what the AI produced, but I can see time savings in those areas.

Many programs used in those fields already use algorithms, rule and filter sets in the daily workflow, so maybe that could be further improved. But overall? No, very unlikely to work.

I’m looking for a Debian based distro

I hate bloated distros

So… Debian?

Have dabbled with LMDE on several 2-4 years old Dell XPS models, which are basically the same hardware as in the Precision models.

What I tested all worked fine, including automated BIOS updates through LMDE itself.

It would depend on the actual laptop in question though, as those lines come in a wild variety of possible hardware options.

Did you even read the post?