When I was looking for work, my laptops setup was embarrassing. MacBook Pro with both a broken keyboard and misbehaving trackpad. I had to bring with me an external mechanical keyboard and trackpad. It worked out in the end but that could leave a bad impression with interviewers.

It wouldn't bother me any. I'd just think you were thrifty, and were capable of working around problems to get things done.

Indeed, seeing a candidate bring a $250 ebay thinkpad running linux would impress me and be great ice breaker

How do you afford $200 if you're interviewing for a six-figure job but don't yet have a six-figure job? Personal loan?

(Also, that doesn't address the question of getting a working decent setup, if you're not otherwise using it.)

If I need to advise someone how to come up with $200, he isn't capable of a 6 figure job. If I have to hold someone's hand to set up programming tools on a laptop, he isn't capable of a 6 figure programming job.

Interesting - why is that? Have you hired such people and found them incapable of doing the work?

You're just trolling.

So you have no actual explanation for your hiring practices, just deep-seated biases that happen to correlate with bias against protected classes but isn't nominally actually against protected classes. Makes sense—that makes you well-qualified to be an interviewer for many tech companies.