Hi Alison

I have been really enjoying these poems which you have been posting. Thank you for taking the time to share them.

I want to stare some of them, but I just wanted to check attribution. At least one is attributed to Dr Ezzideen Shahab, but are the others your work?

Instead of just throwing random preferences out there, I'll help clarify the field of comments:

1) Thinkpads USED to be a safe choice, but Lenovo has been tainting that model line for a few years. Search and find specific models, and don't just buy because it has the Thinkpad brand.
2) Framework is 100% ready to go. They have a Refurb store where everything is cheap, but if you find one cheaper, get it.
3) Dell had a ton of Linux ready laptops under the XPS brand not long ago. Search and find out which to make sure, but they shipped with Linux installed.
4) I hate to say it, but HP Probooks were solid and shipped with Linux also. Terrible company, but they make decent enterprise products. They'll sell for cheap on eBay.

If you're in the US, refurbished thinkpads are probably the best option. Not so much here in Australia (but you mentioned GBP so perhaps you're in UK). Whatever. I bought a refurb Dell Latitude 3120 for AU$229

mfg yr 2021
Intel(R) Pentium(R) Silver N6000 @ 1.10GHz
8Gb RAM
Intel UHD graphics
Intel Wi-Fi 5 9560 (160 MHz)
Bluetooth 5.0
Display: 1366 x 768 11.6" touchscreen 2-in-1
Disc: M.2 256Gb PCIe NVME Class 35 SSD
1.35kg

Runs voidlinux like it was born to it. It's my travel laptop.

If you're able to code from a terminal, and care about longer battery life (my main concern when working from a coffee shop or elsewhere), I'd recommend getting a used android tablet, pry something from xiaomi or oneplus. You can find a decent model used for around that price with > 8 hour battery life easily.

Get a good stand, a solid bluetooth keyboard (logitech makes some great portable ones), and put termux on it (can probably handle light python locally).

If you need it to do CPU powerful tasks, use termux to remote into a VPS or your home server, and let a plugged in linux machine do the work so you can save your device's battery life. This is how I code at least.

I'm in the UK, and I've had decent laptops from rapidIT and ITZoo, both .co.uk as far as I remember. I can't remember which laptop I got from Rapid as it was a few years ago, but the first one had a faulty motherboard, and they swapped the laptop with no issues.

I had a Stonebook branded Clevo N750BU from ITZoo, which is an i7 based laptop, and Mint works perfectly on it. It's quite old now, so you'll probably get a newer one for your budget, but with a RAM upgrade it runs everything I throw at it. I use it for designing and editing logos in Inkscape and Krita, and for editing a website in html, css, and javascript, so anything newer should do it even better 😀

Keep browsing eBay and HotUKDeals. You can easily find something really good for <£200.

This 11th Gen Intel Dell laptop was going to £150 this morning and I was on the verge of ordering it and adding more RAM.

This sub is obsessed with Thinkpads, but when you're looking for a secondhand bargain then you pick up what comes opportunistically. The market is flooded with Dells because businesses change machines long before they go out of date and generally keep them in very very good condition.

Just popped Arch on a Thinkpad Carbon X1 gen8. There about 300 on eBay. Great decision

I use Arch btw

I have recently bought 2 dirt cheap thinkpads, one for me and one for the wife.

T490s - i5 intel
T14s - Ryzen 5 AMD

Both are tick all your requirements except for the numbpad, the T14s is definitely worth the extra money, though. It can even handle some medium gaming.
Both have upgradeable nvme ssds. However the ram is soldered on the "s" versions of these laptops so find one with 16gb or more.

I've had great results with various refurbished Dell Latitudes from eBay over the years. I have a stack of about 5 or 6 of 'em and they've all run many mainstream Linux distros with fantastic out-of-the-box support. I pass 'em out to members of the household whenever a laptop is needed and they'll usually get the job done.

I'd just type in "Dell Latitude" on eBay and filter by price and such. I suspect any model with an i5 and 8GB RAM oughta be fine for light programming work. I've found sellers with high ratings (like 97% or higher) and thousands of sales are pretty reliable (and tend to have return policies in case you get a lemon). Just test all the hardware (webcam, microphone, headphone jack, USB ports, ethernet, etc) as soon as you get it.

I've saved a lot of money over the years buying secondhand, and these machines have been running without a hiccup for years of casual use.