just to complicate matters the reports of cpu/mb architecture being open to compromise and that the fix will drop speeds considerable needs to be taken into account.
it seems daft to get a new pooter only to have to fix it immediately and halve it's speed. it might be best to get a rig that avoids those problems if i can.
looks like it will be an AMD cpu as theirs are only vulnerable to one variant/aspect and it is the one that can be fixed with little effect on performance and there are suitable patches for 10 and linux
from what i can gather any intel (and some other manufacturers) chips from the last decade will need several fixes and one of them knocks about 30% off speed/ability in complex high load tasks
( which i guess includes most of the things i want it for )
hey ho better to find out at this stage, this machine is so old as to not be at risk but tt's new lappy is, at least it will still be plenty powerful for her usual words and maths and talking to the work mainframe stuff even if it does need a debilitating change to the kernel parameters at birth.
i wonder if the sale of goods acts covers selling goods the manufacturer knew to be "faulty" , they were told a while ago and this was shipped this year
a % refund on any lost performance and a few nice bits of" sorry have this for the inconvenience" should be a minimum redress.
)
and this was shipped this year 
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