Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Richard P. Feynman
I think the same is true for a lot of folks and self hosting. Sure, having data in our own hands is great, and yes avoiding vendor lock-in is nice. But at the end of the day, it's nice to have computers seem "fun" again.
At least, that's my perspective.
Hobby 1: Ballroom dancing
No I'm pretty sure Strictly Ballroom is a completely accurate portrayal of ballroom dancing.
Whatever you decide for your laptop, I'm a proponent of a barebones off-site setup if you're trying for 3-2-1 backup or similar.
I use a raspberry pi 3 with a single HD (ZFS) retaining some number of daily/weekly/monthly snapshots. Daily rsync, everything over WireGuard+VPS (TailScale would work too).
From our experience in the US, the birth is nothing compared to the financial drain of the other expenses. And at this age, childcare dwarfs all the other child-related expenses.
We have great insurance and don't rely on family for childcare though, so the math is very very different for someone with "free" familial childcare and no/lousy insurance...
Same
rsync to a pi 3 with a (single) ZFS drive at family's house. Retain some daily/weekly/monthly snapshots.
I have a (free) VPS with static IPv4 which is how I connect everything.
Both the VPS and the remote site have limited network speed (I think 50Mbps for VPS), so the initial sync was done sneakernet (well..."airplane net"). Nightly rsync is no problem bandwidth-wise, and is mostly just any new videos I've uploaded to my local Immich instance.
Scully and Mulder would not put up with this shit.
I think some commercial TVs might do what you want.
In grad school I picked up a an old free HP LaserJet, with an Ethernet NIC card (it was an upgradable printer, maybe from the mid 2000s?).
It was great! Only complaint was no duplexer, but the thing printed great from Linux and the generic toner was cheap.
Today though...the experience is a bit different.
It is really powerful per watt, and has a built-in UPS. Any homelab type things you could do with that? macOS+homebrew will give you a nice *NIX feel, very familiar if you're a Linux user.
I'm a fan of having a remote homelab computer+disk for off-site storage. This would be a good candidate in that it wouldn't use excessive power at a friend/family's place, but may be overkill (I use a pi3 for that).