I am interested in running bitcoin core to help support the network and also get more involved in bitcoin. I read the minimum requirements here that say:
Desktop or laptop hardware running recent versions of Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux.
350 gigabytes of free disk space, accessible at a minimum read/write speed of 100 MB/s.
2 gigabytes of memory (RAM)
A broadband Internet connection with upload speeds of at least 400 kilobits (50 kilobytes) per second
An unmetered connection, a connection with high upload limits, or a connection you regularly monitor to ensure it doesn’t exceed its upload limits. It’s common for full nodes on high-speed connections to use 200 gigabytes upload or more a month. Download usage is around 20 gigabytes a month, plus around an additional 340 gigabytes the first time you start your node.
6 hours a day that your full node can be left running. (You can do other things with your computer while running a full node.) More hours would be better, and best of all would be if you can run your node continuously.
As I suspected, my current machine (MacBook Air, lol) is not going to work. It looks like I only have 61 gigs of 120 available disk space. Although I have some programming experience, I really don't know a lot about computers. I think I would like to get something a little more powerful, so I can run bitcoin core and also some other projects that require a better machine. I honestly don't even know how to check the read/write speed (processor?) or what an unmetered connection is. Does anyone have advice for shopping for a machine that can meet these requirements? Does not need to be a mac.