Pulled an old ThinkPad out of a drawer, wiped it, stuck a 1TB drive in and let it sync over a weekend. It's been on a shelf under my desk ever since, fan humming, never once rebooted on its own. I check on it more than I care to admit.
The surprising part is how little I've had to do after the sync. No maintenance, no babysitting. Just a quiet box doing honest work in the corner. I named it, which is probably a sign I'm too far gone.
Every time I think about buying some shiny plug and play node I remind myself this cost nothing and hasn't let me down once. If it dies tomorrow it already earned its keep twice over.
It's OK, but the question is: what for?
Everybody wants to run a bitcoin node but few really knows "what for" they do it.
And if your answer will be - "to help the network"... think twice how moronic answer is that.
fair question. for me it's mostly self interest, I verify my own transactions instead of trusting someone else's node and I learn a lot from watching the logs. 'helping the network' was never my reason, just a nice side effect.