Most normies will never pay for a search engine. I’ve tried and tried to show them the advantages of Kagi but the value just isn’t there for them. I ditched Google for Kagi long ago and I couldn’t be happier.

Check out the Dell Wyse 5070. You can find them used within your budget.

Rsync is what you’re after, especially if you’re moving large files. I regularly transfer hundreds of gb using rsync and it’s great.

https://mxroute.com/ or https://www.fastmail.com/

I picked up a cheap lifetime account on mxroute a while back and have been pretty happy with it.