I now have an Apple MacBook Pro BASIC (8/256). 13″.
Combined with the fact that my battery is still 89% intact, I’ll be using it for at least another year.
And perhaps if there are no problems with the screen, hard drive, or most importantly, the battery, an additional year will be added to it.
Maybe the next laptop won’t be an Apple one, but a FrameWork 16.
Of course, I will take the step of choosing 64 GB or even 128 GB as RAM.
But it can still change, because two years is still a long time.
What attracts me to FrameWork is that you can handle everything from hardware. Upgrade the motherboard, no problem. Upgrade RAM/SSD no problem.
IGPU only or DGPU for immediate or later addition.
Especially the six expansion slots where you can add a connection or an additional 250GB/1.0TB hard drive.
Linux will become a good alternative to Windows provided the games are fully supported.

And respond to your ram in the past.
The first home-built PC had 768MB of DDR PC 333 memory, on average PCs had 128/256MB, the rather elegant gaming rig had 512MB, and the tech nerd had it at 1024MB.

As a rule of thumb for me (personal choice) I always double the standard of that generation as the RAM.
So 256 for me is 512 as a minimum, 1024MB for me is 2048MB, 6GB for me is 12GB, 8GB for me is 16GB, and finally in my current gaming PC it’s 32GB.