I see where you’re coming from, I don’t like advertising and in order for Lemmy to really get as big as Reddit it would probably need a more robust monetization model eventually. I don’t care to pay for good services as long as they are useful and don’t steal my data. However since it didn’t start like that it’s never going to work out, many people won’t go for that.
A while ago I thought the same thing about Apple and then I realized that it’s just really easy comparatively. But yeah I’m doing something similar going into computer science. Depends on what surface you get, I got a refurbished Surface Book 3 on Amazon which is always a gamble but it was significantly cheaper, mine looked and felt completely new when I got it. Been holding up well so far.