How are people able to develop on chromebook-like devices with 2GB RAM? I'm seeing a lot of such devices in this thread and don't understand it. Once I spin up a couple of database servers, a few Visual Studio solutions for the various products I work on, and a handful of testing tools I'm easily pushing 12GB ram or more.

Are these low-end machines being used as hobbyist or frontend-only web development? I can't think of any other explanation.

To answer the original question: Thinkpad X220. i7. Maxed out RAM. It's no portable workstation but I can push it just as hard without worrying about it overheating or failing.