I'm Balaji, a third-year CS student. Not going to oversell myself, but I've put in some work and I plan to keep going.

My first Hello, World! was on this machine. My first open source contribution too.

The machine I'm on is a Lenovo E325, the "amma laptop" as people call it here. My cousin lent it to me. He got it from a state government scheme for school students back in 2012.

It's slow. Keypresses have a noticeable delay. I can't keep more than 3 apps open. I close the browser just to open Neovim. The keyboard gave up, so I've been on an external one. Battery's gone, it lives plugged in. A lot of modern tools just won't run on it at all.

I've done what I can. Switched to Linux since Windows wouldn't boot, moved to i3wm, swapped everything heavy for something lighter. VS Code to Neovim, Chrome to Brave. Just keep finding ways to make it work.

My parents are working really hard to give me and my sister a decent education. I can't ask them for a laptop that costs close to their annual income. So I'm trying to figure this out on my own.

I've never brought this laptop to college. Honestly, out of embarrassment. I know that's on me. But that's just the truth.

Recently I registered for Big Code 2026, a Google program I'm really looking forward to. It needs front camera access. My laptop doesn't have one. I just sat there and thought,

my true potential is being limited by this hardware.

I want an Apple M4 Pro. I just want to open a project and not wonder if my machine can handle it.

If anything I've built has helped you, or you just get what it's like to keep going with what you have, I'd really appreciate your support.

Anything helps. Genuinely.

Sponsors are credited in my README and release notes.