I have a similarly spec'ed mini ITX desktop from the same proc generation-- it's an i3 instead of an i5 mobile proc but roughly the same capabilities. I'm sure it sips a bit more power than the laptop but it works fine as a home server.
I'm always a bit surprised by that old machine. It has a slightly above mid-range GPU from that time period and the thing can still play newer games-- at 720p, with low to mid settings without much of an issue. It's certainly not setting any records but for a 10 year old machine... it just tells me that we reached a point some years ago where hardware capabilities were just fine for a wide range oF normal activities, and that unless someone is using a machine for gaming, large data sets, or compiling lots of code then they'd probably ne just fine with a reasonably spec'ed 10 year old system.
Most of the time that I'm called on to deal with a supposedly aging 3-year old computer for a family member that's slowed down a bit it has nothing to do with the hardware getting old. Most of the time it's accumulated crap running on startup combined with having purchased the computer that had the highest # attached to storage (ooh 2TB I'll never use!) instead of a snappy 512GB SSD.
This script produces a good assessment of Spectre problems for a wide variety of CPUs. I know that they are difficult to exploit, and the mitigations are disabled by many because of their performance impact.