I also had to upload 2000 photos. The issue was that they had to encrypt each, which took me like 2 days with it running in the background 😅 It could have also been due to my phone being quite old. I don’t rely on it that much, other than using it as an off-site back-up for my most important documents.

I do agree that the best choice is a self-hosted solution with proper security, but sadly not everyone has the time or the skills to manage that. The Proton CEO thing also annoyed me, but the Proton Foundation as a whole has good opinions about privacy (e.g., against chat control proposal in the EU). However, next time a slip like this happens from them, I’ll probably have had enough time to move my stuff to a local deployment.

Proton offers a Drive, and they’re based in Switzerland. I don’t see them being strong-armed like this by the UK government any time soon.

Might be even cheaper if you wait a bit and build it yourself. Next gen GPUs are coming out, which will lead to some price cuts on the current gen.

However, like others here have mentioned, you’re paying extra for them building it for you and warranty.

I don’t know if ro.pcpartpicker.com works well for Romania, but you can also give that a try and see what the individual components would net you on the local market.

Building the computer yourself along with your kid could also be a nice opportunity to teach him (and maybe yourself, if you’re not that knowledgeable) about the underlying components.