content: That is a bit of a blackpill. These things are certainly sketchy but I don't think deabreakers in all cases. It sounds like the biggest risk is using an onboard NIC if you have those turned on. That said, you can buy laptops from Puri.sm that have ME supposedly disabled. Or older gear, like 2009 or so. My favorite value/performance/non-ME range of desktops (can work as servers, but physically big) is the Dell T5400. You can also get the T7400 but it's super big and heavy. I think that's the last generation without Intel ME. They are about ten years old but still quite workable systems in my opinion. I bought a T5400 with 16GiB of ECC memory and an E5450 Xeon for $150 delivered off Amazon a couple years back.