New basic setup recommendations

Dell Optiplex 760 (very old Core2Duo) and 980 (older i5) have parallel ports in Tower cases, both work good with LinuxCNC for software stepping and 980 is good for Mesa.
HP Z210, Z220, Z230 should all have a parallel port header and usually come with the adapter/port in, also very good for LinuxCNC and built like tanks.
Some Fujitsu i5 and i7 are also very good, but no idea what models they vere, and i have a Fujitsu laptop that is very good for Mesa, unfortunately gave it to a client and got it back with a broken screen.
As for laptops, i have bought several older Lenovo laptops and strangely most are ok for Mesa use, example X220 and T420S were unusable, X240 seems OK from some short testing! A T470 i have in use for over 6 months on a production machine, works fine with Mesa 7i92.
There are several topics here on the forum with plenty of used PC/laptops tested with LinuxCNC for Mesa and parallel port, but as with everything, yout milage may vary, as i had two of the same Acer laptops where one was very good and the other was terrible for latency, the only difference was CPU i think.

Should not affect work/use, LinuxCNC is very good at reporting issues, so if LinuxCNC is not complaining, move on, all is good.