Right - I don’t know what’s going on with wifey’s laptop as there was no dust in it at all, but fan error messages would pop up in the boot-up. I pulled the cover and that stopped. (No more error messages.) Have been so busy with all this other stuff that I’ve not had a chance to follow up.
Anyway, I snagged a Dell Optiplex 3070 MICRO, i5-9500T 2.2 GHz, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, Win 11 Pro, on eBay tonight. $112 plus shipping and tax — will come out to $126.48 all told, so, not too bad. Seller had very little feedback, so, kinda taking a chance, but, he was good about answering questions, which is usually a good sign. This machine is likely faster than my 11 Pro desktop we’ve been discussing(!), unless wifey has a zillion windows open... Hopefully RAM prices will come back down, and hopefully this machine doesn’t have any weird issues...
I suppose dogs are ok if they are not sick and all you have to do is walk the dog - hahaha!
I think that you did very well... I have often had better luck on eBay over the years that with Amazon with phones, computers, drone components and DSLR lenses, etc... I use Amazon to figure out what the going price is and then see if I can do better on eBay.