I would like to buy myself a second hand and install Linux on it. I was looking into ThinkPad T14 gen1 or gen2 devices because of their maintainability and repairability. I found one where I live with a Ryzen processor but it has the wrong keyboard. How easy and expensive would it be to swap this with US English? Are there any good alternatives to the ThinkPads? I fancy the X1 but don’t like the fact that I cannot change or swap anything on it. The T14 looks very bulky and unattractive but at least can have the RAM upgraded and the battery changed.
I fancy the Framework laptops, but don’t want to spend so much on a laptop. Especially the latest 16 inch with Ryzen AI CPUs.
The T14 G1 is at least cheap, like 350€ with the 400 nits low power display and the battery is at 99%. I guess with tlp installed and autocpugfreq I can get 5-6 hours out of it.
I got an X280 with 8 GB of RAM a few months ago, works great with Linux. Paid just $175. It even works with Haiku OS! Pic: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/731/895/755/005/386/original/1b09c5a0d636d9a5.jpg