Some of the lesser-known coins do have much lower system requirements. Like Evergreencoin (EGC) which uses a hybrid POW and POS system. One won't make big money from mining like with the popular coins (provided that you discover blocks often enough). And you'd need to also own and stake these coins. But it does provide some reward for those who help support the coin by running a node on their laptop/desktop.

By the way, I'm running EGC and Navcoin nodes on a humble 10-year-old Dell laptop. While using it for browsing and word-processing. Every so often, my laptop would successfully discover a block and I'd get a small reward. But it's being involved and contributing to a coin and its community that's my main objective here.